The Hour Unseen
by 30CK
Summary: There is a Darkness at Hogwarts, one hidden there for a millenia. A blue wave of energy in Harry's 2nd year unleashes it, and he and six other students must use the secret 25th hour of the day to overcome both the Darkness and the Basilisk that hides it.
1. Chapter 1  There's Something in the Air

I believe that this is actually the first Harry Potter x Midnighters fic that has ever been done. If it is not, forgive my presumptuousness. Now, before this story begins, a few things need to be adressed:

a) I realize that the Chamber of Secrets takes place in 92, or 93 or something, and that The Midnighters takes place in 98. I am very aware of that, believe me. But if you look through any Potter crossovers, you'll see that everyone, aside from a few select fics, ignores the time difference between the two books/movies/whatever. So I, as a fanfiction writer and licensced bullshitter, am ignoring the major time difference as I see fit. And here, I see fit. So I'm ignoring it.

b) for those getting their hopes up before they read, the Original Cast (of the midnighters) is not going to show. Sorry to spoil the fun, I share your pain - I think that it would have been a lot of fun for Dess to meet Tonks, for some reason. Oh, and there's no Polymath here, simply because no Polymath in this story could stand up to Desdemona's distinct brand of Complete and Total Awesome.

c) this is a 3-part series, spanning the Chamber of Secrets and some of the Prisoner of Azkaban. For those who stick with me to the end, prepare for a long but hopefully-satisfying ride.

d) _it is NOT mandatory for you to have read The Midnighters series before reading this._ Is it recommended? Sure. Is it absolutely necessarry? No. Since this is brand-new characters in a brand-new place from the original, things will have to be thoroughly explained here. Which they will.

Now! Without further ado...

* * *

'The Thirteenth Hour' Series

Book One

The Hour Unseen

* * *

Chapter One – There's Something in the Air

Nov. 7, 11:02 am

They had been acting restless for the last few days; or maybe it was hours, or months – everything blurred together and slowed to a crawl inside the deathly-silent walls of Azkaban, and each second was counted by every drop of water that bled through the cracks of the cells and fell to the stone floor, yet time became meaningless and flew forward as the madness overtook its residents.

He laughed, and he cried, and he did them both at once, because he could feel the madness wrapping around him and he could do nothing to stop it.

Even through the insanity, it became apparent, obvious, that they were different. Eager, or nervous, or some indefinable emotion. They didn't roam the halls like usual, he saw them more and more through the magically-enchanted iron bars of his window, shuffling outside and keeping their heads pointed towards the sky.

Waiting for something?

Waiting for…

He could think clearer when he watched them; something to concentrate on, instead of the ceiling or pile of blankets or the rusted, fractured, shite-covered chamberpot. The insanity kept back, just barely, when he was trying to put pieces of a puzzle he knew nothing of together.

If only he could put his cracked mind back together as easily.

He figured he was mad. If he hadn't been before, when he was alive, then he certainly was now. He'd heard of a saying once, about how hearing voices meant you were barmey. He heard them all the time now, people screaming and voices crying and whispers of friends long gone, snarls of utmost hatred and imagined voices of futures that could have been and should have been but never would be because of him.

Sometimes he wished he had gotten Kissed. Other times he wished he had never existed – the only thing he managed to do with his life was ruin the lives of the best people imaginable.

When he remembered who he was, he wished he could escape and prove everyone wrong.

It didn't matter, though, because he couldn't run, or get far enough away. Not now.

But if there was a right time… They coated the island like a black cloud, hiding the ground from view, hiding the few spots and patches of green that were left, that hadn't been beaten down by the rain and waves and that sense of insane evil.

He hadn't heard a scream in the last minute, or hour, or…

The sun went down, and went up; sometimes it took a long time, sometimes it didn't. It didn't matter what it did, though, because they were always out there, framing the blue sky and the stars and the rising fire and the snickering, grinning face of the moon. He could hear it laughing at him when it was highest in the darkness.

He didn't do it, he didn't do it, it wasn't his fault, he-

He couldn't remember when he'd eaten last; his fingers were talons, digging into his ribs as he held himself to push back the chill.

The guards said it was Halloween, a while back. Days, years, millenniums…one Halloween, two, three, ten, meaningless. One of them had brought their kid with them to work, with a black sheet draped over the little bugger. Dressed as a Dementor for Halloween. Great parenting. He expected the kid to be dead before the night ended.

He wasn't.

At least, he didn't think so.

He had vomited again, and fallen into fitful sleep on the mold-strewn blankets in the corner that served as a bed.

There was screaming, once, when the sun was high up in the sky, and he could feel his blood turn to ice. The scream cut off before it finished, and he knew that another prisoner was gone. At least one Dementor in Azkaban was still doing its job. The rest, though…

Still loitering around outdoors.

He would wake up, sweating, and hear their collective breaths rattling like a death toll, shaking him deep into his bones even from such a distance. A nightmare outside of dreams.

They were waiting for something. He knew it, when he was lucid enough to remember.

What was it?

What was it, what was it?

He needed to get out. Maybe what they were waiting for would give him that chance. They were waiting.

He could wait a little longer.

* * *

It was a sad fact that Harry Potter was very much used to several different types of pain by the time his second year at Hogwarts came around. Name it, he'd probably experienced it – broken bones, burns, bruises, a concussion or two, not to mention all the new opportunities for injuries that magic brought into his life – whether through accident or not.

At the moment, he was nursing several very large and very ugly bruises and exactly one broken arm, shattered at the elbow. He wasn't entirely sure if he had any physical elbow left or just fragments of bone where such a thing used to be. Courtesy of a friendly neighborhood bludger from hell. Couldn't it go after someone else now that it'd beat the shite out of him?

He yelped and ducked as the aforementioned Rouge Bludger attempted to take his head clean off his shoulders; he felt his hair ripple as it whipped past.

Guess it couldn't. Fantastic.

He growled and clenched his working fist tight around the broom handle in frustration. Where the hell had that Snitch _gone?_

He had been so _close_ just a second ago – the Snitch had been right above Malfoy's thankfully-oblivious cranium, not even ten meters away from Harry's own itching hands. Unfortunately, his half-moment spent staring in shock at the little golden ball's audacity allowed the Bludger to take out one of his arms; it took the opportunity to vanish once more. And, what with the Bludger still bent on murdering smallish, black-haired, green-eyed boys, he really felt that he needed to end the game before it took out his other arm and rendered him completely useless. Or dead.

Good thing, though: Draco was now absolutely terrified, and seemed extremely reluctant to even approach him, lest he be next on its list.

"Harry!"

"Watch out-" a _crack_ sounded from just behind him and he looked over his shoulder, ready to dive off his broom if necessary, to see George Weasley hefting his Beater's Bat and glaring at the metal projectile as it sped away.

"Bloody _hell_, that thing's really got it out for you!" the redhead shouted.

"We've already covered that!" Harry yelled back at him, clenching his teeth immediately after in order to shove down a miasma of pain that radiated from what used to be his arm. In a more strangled voice, he added, "And you're supposed to be at the goalposts!"

"You've only got one arm, you stupid twat!"

The anger and indignation that flooded his system stymied the radiating agony for just a few moments. "I told you to bugger off – _Wood _told you to bugger off, so get back there and play the game! I don't need a bloody bodyguard!"

"Fred's got the goal covered, Harry!" George retorted, smoothly winding his way up to the team Seeker. He kept a fierce mud-brown eye trained upon the homicidal pig-iron sphere, watching as it curved around two Slytherin Chasers and one Gryffindor in its effort to get back to its target. When he was level with Harry, the both of them speeding at a good clip around the pitch, he said in a normal tone of voice, "Besides, they're still below one hundred points; we both know they won't be able to double it before your sorry arse catches the Snitch, so it doesn't matter in the end. I'd rather protect the thing that'll let us win – that's you, by the way, Potter – instead of something that, in the end, doesn't matter a shite-worth." He broke off as the tell-tale whistling of the incoming Bludger rang in their ears, and he twisted his broom sharply and, loaded with centrifugal force, slammed the last bit of his bat into the center of the ball. It went sailing off with a crack like lighting, smashing into the supports of one of the stands and causing a number of Hufflepuffs to shriek in terror.

Dumbledore repaired the damage with a flick of his wand from all the way on the other end of the pitch. Unfortunately, this did nothing to deal with the Bludger issue, much to Harry's displeasure, and the object in question rocketed around the Slytherin stands (there were a few squeals of similar terror from the green-and-silver as it went, though the fact would later be vehemently denied by both House and Head of House) to get back to its target.

"See anything yet?" George asked, shaking his arm and trying to rid his muscles of the slowly-increasing ache that came from hitting a solid metal ball with enough opposing force to send it flying the other way. The action made Harry become all-too aware of the state of his own arm once again, and he suddenly felt so very tired. Everything lost focus, and the idle thought of why someone had not called a time out yet drifted across his mind. His eyes dropped to his arm and he let out a pathetic croak; arms were _not_ supposed to bend that way. Nor was it proper for that much bone to be sticking out, or blood to be flowing out.

Shit.

He swerved dangerously and almost crashed into his redheaded companion as the pain hit him; his eyes blurred something terrible; he felt like throwing up.

"What the – Merlin, Potter, why the hell didn't you say it was that bad?"

His skin prickled, and his eyes caught a sudden glint of gold.

He shoved himself away from George, his arm crying in agony, everything in sight a whirlwind of color except for that one bright, shining point of gold. He dove.

* * *

Something was coming.

The screaming had stopped, the moans of memories and wails of tortured dreams had all but ceased.

Something was coming.

He didn't know what it was. But he was ready.

His dark eyes tracked each drop of disease-ridden water that fell from the cracked ceiling to the floor, watched each one fall and explode apart; something to focus on, to give him some sense of time, of place and calm and sanity. Something to keep him tied to the world as it shattered around him, something to make sure that he didn't break apart with it.

They had stopped moving - the Dementors. The guardians. The purveyors of madness.

He was in one of the top cells, and he could look out the window and look down and see them; they were the shadow that was cast over an already-shadowed land.

He'd been ready for the last ten years. Ever since he first stepped into the hell that was Azkaban, he'd been trying to escape. He wasn't the only one. A part of him knew that he wasn't the only one waiting and watching, ready for what was coming. But they didn't matter, because they weren't him.

He took his eyes off of the Dementors and turned them towards the sky. He felt that he should.

Clouds loomed overhead, blocking the sun, and everything in view was grey.

The world shuddered, and shifted.

And everything was blue.

* * *

His entire world was blurred, shapes and forms that he couldn't bother making out,_ couldn't be bothered_ to make out. His eyes were trained solely on that hovering glint of gold and he was so close to it that he could feel the beating of its wings brushing just along his fingers. The Snitch danced just out of reach, teasing him with its presence, mocking him and his agony and his pain.

He was vaguely aware of sounds around him: Malfoy yelling, George yelling, another _thwack _of Beater bat versus Bludger, yelling, yelling, yelling.

It hit just as he felt the cool metal of the Golden Snitch touch lightly against his fingertips; it hit like a tidal wave, pure energy, slamming into the barriers and the wards surrounding the school grounds, around the castle and the Forbidden Forest and the Quidditch Pitch, and rushing through them as easily as water through a sieve. The air rippled and tore in front of it, space itself temporarily displaced by the raw power of the force.

His hair stood on end.

It was blue. It was blue, and it was unstoppable, and it fell across the grounds like the fist of an angry god, searing and burning the air with a _crack_ like thunder and an unforgettable and unmistakable smell of lightning.

It was over almost as soon as it had begun.

He saw it come. He felt it hit.

He fell.

His broom was gone – yanked out from underneath him, it could have been thrown into the Whomping Willow for all he knew – and he was falling. At some point he had thrown up; hot bile still burned in his throat.

He couldn't see much; he couldn't tell if he still had his glasses on his face or not. But he could make out the Snitch clutched in his palm, shaking fingers curled possessively around the golden sphere. Its wings still beat wildly, spasming violently for freedom. Wind whipped around him, sending his robes flying around him. Blood streamed in rivulets of blood past his knuckles from both arms, one of them still useless.

He couldn't feel the pain anymore.

His old, battered wind-up watch was still faithfully strapped to his good wrist, spiderweb cracks reaching across the already-scratched glass/plastic surface; the clock hands that lay obscured just underneath the broken face still faithfully showed the time at which its life ceased, the time that the magical world was hit by an energy force so like, but so _unlike_, lightning; it showed the time that its internal workings were all completely fried and fused together, when everything in Harry Potter's life would change. When the lives of hundreds would change forever.

11:11 am.

His vision blurred and slowly darkened as he fell faster, the sun dimming and the sky blurring and graying over. He couldn't focus his thoughts anymore, and he hazily noticed thousands of birds fleeing the Forbidden Forest, taking to the skies. Going up as he went down.

He heard someone yell his name –George, Wood, Dean, Malfoy, he didn't know, their voices all had blended together in a cacophony of noise that had no purpose and even less meaning.

There was a rush of air in his ears, and a dull _whump_ that rattled through his skull as something collided with the back of his head. His head flared with pain, and his body couldn't take it all any longer; everything went dark, the only bright spots being the sun's reflection off of the Snitch in his hand and the watch on his wrist.

Just before he passed out, before it all went black and he was released from the pain, one more thing pierced his haze, as clear as if it had been right next to him: someone, a girl, was screaming. A high, terrible, keening cry of a thing possessed, of untold horrors and torture, and it broke through Harry's mind and tore at his heart. It was the most horrible thing he'd ever heard, and for almost a full minute, that scream was all that existed.

And when he finally lost consciousness, when everything became nothing, she was still screaming.

* * *

Note: ideas for new powers would be very welcome. No X-men mutant-y powers, though - they have to be at least _mostly_ kept within the bounds of regular human possibility.


	2. Chapter 2 Patients, Patience, My Dear

Chapter Two – Patients, Patience, My Dear

-Nov. 7, 11:36 am-

Madame Pomfrey was not having a good day.

It wasn't that she wasn't expecting a terrible injury or two – today _was_, after all, a Gryffindor-Slytherin Quidditch match, and those always had a habit of getting bloody.

But _this…_

She hadn't had this many injured parties in one event since the last generation, when Sirius Black and James Potter had gone a step too far with Severus Snape in Potions class.

It didn't help that no one, not even the Headmaster, knew what exactly the 'event' that occurred across the castle grounds _was._ It had blown people off their brooms and out of their seats, sent the owls into fits inside their prospective tower, and caused the Centaurs to disappear into the depths of the Forest.

They had gotten the entire Quidditch Pitch cleared within fifteen minutes, and the injured magicked to her Hospital Wing within ten. Before another five, they were all in beds and under her care and authority.

There were seven in all.

Seven…it was supposed to be a lucky number, one that was especially potent in the magical world. Some of the most powerful wizards were the seventh child born to a family, some of the strongest spells seven letters long or using seven distinct wand movements.

Madame Pomfrey snorted softly to herself.

She'd mended the few broken bones and busted noses that had needed immediate attention, evidence of the panicked scramble that had fallen over the students and teachers when the wave of energy had hit. The seven that lay unconscious on the beds in front of her were the only ones left, and they were all in exactly the same state that she had gotten to them in. None had moved so much as a finger.

Something between a frown and a smile flitted across her lips when she looked at the first bed, occupied by one Harry Potter. She still had the plaque that his father had given her for a Christmas gift one year – "it'll keep you from having to go through the hassle of vacating an occupied bed to make room for me if I just have a bed all to myself" was his reasoning, what with how much of the year he had spent under her care. Most of the time it was one Quidditch injury or another, but there was the occasional hex or other such injuries that brought him to her (she had suspected the young Lily Evans of inflicting a large majority, but James had never divulged the name of his attacker).

Mr. Potter had exactly one shattered elbow on his right arm, and several serious fractures radiating both ways from it down his humerus and ulna. The back of his head was cracked open something terrible – she couldn't sufficiently test for brain damage until he woke, no matter how much she worried about it. Both injuries had been caused by a Bludger from their game, and solid pig-iron going eighty kilometers per hour had a habit of demolishing whatever it came into direct contact with. She considered him lucky that he still had a head. He'd have to stay at least one full night before she'd even consider allowing him to leave.

The next bed held a Slytherin second-year, name of Daphne Greengrass. She had been in the green-and-silver stands when the shockwave hit and based on reports from her companion, Tracey Davis, she had been blown backwards out of her seat and spun like a top before she crashed into a truly unfortunate Gregory Goyle. She was sporting a bruised shoulder and hip, and a sprained wrist, but nothing seemed life-threatening. She might have some bad whiplash when she woke up, but there wasn't a whole lot she could do about that, save a light heating charm on the ache to help loosen the muscles. Ms. Greengrass had still not woken, not even to the quick _Enervate_ that she had cast after her initial assessment.

Her eyes slid to the next two beds.

Fred and George Weasley.

She'd never had both of them laying injured in her Hospital Wing at one time; it had always been one or the other. They, like Mr. Potter, had been thrown off their brooms. Fortunately, they did not suffer the same punishment of that insane Bludger, but the hard-packed earth was just as unforgiving. They had bounced off one another in midair and landed together in a jumbled heap, slowed down by Dumbledore just before they hit the ground. As such, they were both still alive, if a little roughed up: Fred had a broken left arm, George a broken right. She had already set them on the mend, and would have been ready to discharge them within the hour…

But they were suffering from the same unconsciousness as Ms. Greengrass was, and also refused to be magically-awakened.

They all did.

An older lad, Cedric Diggory, was next. His Hufflepuff friends informed her that when the blue wave had hit him, he had been blown out of his seat and out of the canary-yellow stands, smashing through one of the wooden beams along the way. He had been thrown all the way to the edge of the Forbidden Forest, his fall being slowed just enough by the trees and foliage to avoid permanent injury. That wooden beam hadn't done his shoulders any favors, though, and she had been required to physically force them back into place; magic wasn't and couldn't be a be-all-do-all medical miracle. As it was, Mr. Diggory remained out like a light – something she was happy to keep constant, as his back wouldn't be fully healed for another few hours at the least.

Draco Malfoy was on the bed furthest from the door, by the window; she was fairly certain that Mr. Potter wouldn't react positively to his presence, nor would his friends, and had positioned him so to hopefully avoid any fights before they began.

Mr. Malfoy was the only one to have kept a firm hold on his broom when the shockwave had hit; he had instead crashed into the Gryffindor stands, thankfully without injury to any bystanders. He had a dislocated jaw – which she had since realigned and applied a cooling charm to in hopes of reducing swelling – and had bitten his tongue almost completely off. She had thrown a healing potion down his throat and his tongue would be good as new before nightfall. He'd talk a little funny for another day after, but that was from the natural swelling. Lastly were a sprained wrist and a torn muscle, and those she'd fixed within the first few minutes.

The only thing that kept him in the Hospital Wing was that damned _Enervate_-resistant unconsciousness.

The final bed was occupied by one of the smallest, frailest little girls Madame Pomfrey had ever seen. To her deep dismay and pity, it was a first year – one whom she had been unaware was even attending Hogwarts this year.

All six of the others had had some sort of concerned party trailing behind; Mr. Potter had Mr. Weasley and Ms. Granger fretting about plus a portion of his Quidditch team, Mr. Diggory a whole slew of friends (most of whom, it seemed, were young women), Mrrs. Weasley and Weasley had the remaining Gryffindor team along with their friend Mr. Jordan, Mr. Malfoy had Mrrs. Goyle and Crabbe and Ms. Parkinson, and Ms. Greengrass had an out-of-sorts Ms. Davis.

But the little first-year, pale as a sheet and sweating something terrible and moaning pitifully on her bed, had none. No one had followed her unconscious form all the way to the Hospital Wing, no one had been crying over her or concerned about her welfare. No one seemed to want anything to do with her.

It was because of that exact lack of company that had Madame Pomfrey at a loss as to what was wrong with the girl. There hadn't been anyone willing to tell her what had happened.

When she had reached her up in the stands, the rest of her House had already cleared out, vacating the Quidditch Pitch as fast as their ill-equipped legs could take them. She had been unconscious and laying on the floor, her hands clutching her head hard enough that her fingernails were drawing rivulets of blood and dying parts of her ghost-blonde hair an ugly red.

She had no idea what happened. But she'd find out what had after the rest of her patients were stabilized, even if she had to force her way into the Ravenclaw Common Room. Manners be damned, she was a Healer – rules hardly applied for her.

The only reason she knew her House was because of Dumbledore, who had informed her on the way up the castle before vanishing to his office; she hadn't needed to know the girl's name. She already knew it.

Luna Lovegood.

She looked just like her mother, bless her soul – the Healer had taught the girl's mother quite a bit during her time at Hogwarts, back when she was known by her name, Selene, and not as the crazy witch married to the crazier wizard. Extraordinary witch, that one was, and it was a terrible shame what happened to her. There were good reasons for why spell-experimentation wasn't a very large or very well-known field.

Ms. Lovegood let out a long, pitiful whine, her throat rasping painfully, and scrunched up into a ball. Madame Pomfrey didn't even try to push down those last vestiges of maternal instinct she had left, and gently smoothed the girl's hair out of her face and wiped her brow clean of sweat.

Poor dear.

She let her eyes sweep the Hospital Wing again.

She hoped they'd wake up soon.

* * *

-12:03 pm-

Auror Wilson was what some called a very uncomplicated man, who lived a very uncomplicated life. He had spent a very uncomplicated time in Auror training, and in Hogwarts before that, and before he went to magical schooling he lived as a muggle with a family that owned an uncomplicated farm. He had fairly uncomplicated problems, and he had one of the most mind-numbingly, uncomplicated jobs possible for a dark-wizard-catcher of his admittedly-low caliber.

After all, there wasn't much that he had to do in Azkaban: tell some prisoners to shut up, bang on some cells, drag some half-dead crazies into one of the Chambers and let the Dementors do their thing before taking the empty body and chucking it into the churning sea. That was about it.

But today, of all days – it was his first-month anniversary of managing to stay sane while in his new job as an Azkaban Auror – everything decides to go straight to hell.

It had started off fairly well – the Dementors were still on their vacation, or whatever it was that had them standing outside for the past two weeks. Meant no screaming from the majority of the prison. They had only had one execution, and that was before his shift had started; from what he'd heard, the guys had dragged the crazy chick outside and thrown her into the middle of the cloaked crowd; from what he'd heard, it had taken them over three hours to finish her off.

How terrible. What a tragedy.

Everything was quiet and well and good and all until eleven-something, when it hit.

He had been up on level 3 – home to the life-in-prison psychos, the ones the Ministry wanted suffering from complete and total insanity more than they wanted them dead – passing the cells of the wonderful Lestrange family – why the trouble was taken to put relatives near each other was a mystery that was never explained; they just got the orders, they didn't make 'em – when that…blue…energy…_thing_…swept across the island like a tidal wave.

The crazies had been catapulted off their cots or wherever and smashed up against their cell door or wall or barred window, picked up and tossed like they were ragdolls.

Bellatrix Lestrange had been laughing until the stone floor brutally (but thankfully) robbed her of consciousness.

Then the Dementors attacked.

They had swept into the prison like a dark flood, leaving the once-slightly-alive grassy island a barren wasteland behind them. From there on forward, it was a free-for-all, every man for himself.

The prisoners hadn't stood a chance.

And if it went on like it was, neither would he.

"Jenks!" Auror Wilson yelled. "Jenks, where are you?" He couldn't deal with this kind of disaster all on his own! He only been here a month, and had never had to deal with more than two Dementors at a time before! "Jenks – dammit!" He thundered down the steps to the first level and after erecting a hasty Patronus shield, pointed his wand at his throat and growled, "_Sonorous."_ With an extra kick to his voice, he let out a yell that reverberated through the entire prison. "JENKS! HELP! FIRST LEVEL!"

Auror Jenks, a seventy-year-old 'Voldewar' veteran with more grey hair than he chose to admit, was next to him in an instant, his arm a blur that defied his age as a silver rhinoceros exploded out of his wand and bolted down the hall like lightning. Dementors were thrown clear to the ceiling by its glowing horn, and their unearthly screams shook the stone walls.

"What the _hell_ is wrong with you, boy?" Jenks roared, spittle flying from his lips. "Either go Full Animal or don't even bother with the damned spell – we have the bracelets to do that much!" Azkaban Aurors wore magic-fuelled polished-steel rings around both wrists that acted as a low-grade Patronus charm to keep the effects of the prison guards at bay.

"I-I can't!" Wilson wailed. "I never got that far!"

"You have got to be _kidding me, boy!"_ Another rhinoceros stormed through an advancing wave of Dementors. "You are _not _supposed to be stationed here without a certified Grade 3 Patronus under your belt!"

"I'm sorry! It's all my great-uncle's fault – I didn't want to be here in the first place!"

"Oh, enough with the pity-party!" Jenks shouted, grabbing his younger partner by the front of the robes and dragging him close. "If you can't fight, then call for backup – go get to that damned Floo connection before they swarm!"

'Swarming', as it was put by the Azkaban Aurors, was the worst thing to happen to a Dementor's victim; instead of one Dementor approaching and delivering a full Kiss, it was five, ten, _twenty_ of the bastards all crowding around and taking turns, like it was a game. Sick, twisted, Merlin's mistake…

"I don't know where that is!" Wilson cried in panicked desperation. "We've never had to use it before!"

Jenks growled something nasty about his partner and his partner's mother before throwing out a smaller silver rhinoceros and running after it. "Come _on!"_ he shouted over his shoulder when he saw that Wilson wasn't following.

If they didn't get some bloody backup, and _now, _they were going to wind up as two empty husks on the stone floor. Just like the prisoners.

He didn't know about this idiot Wilson, but Simon Ulysses Jenks wasn't quite ready to die yet. And he'd be damned before he was going to kick it while stuck on this hellhole.

* * *

-12:29 pm-

"-not honestly expect me to believe-"

"I humbly ask you to lower your voice, Minerva."

"-absolutely nothing, you're _Albus Dumbledore,_ for Merlin's sake-"

"Now I plead – quite down, Professor."

"-_Hospital Wing_, Albus-"

"I have moved to insisting, Minerva, that you stop ranting quite so loudly."

"-no idea what happened to them or why they don't-"

"_Minerva." _Her lips snapped shut and thinned out at the simmering heat in the man's voice, pressed together in dissatisfaction and frustration. "I am going to tell you only one more time: I do not have the faintest idea what that wave of energy was or what caused it. I do not know why seven students were completely swept up by it while everyone else was let be. I do not know why they will not _Enervate_ awake. And I do not know if I can fix it, because I simply do not know anything about it.

"Now," Dumbledore continued a little more briskly, reading three thick books at once and writing nonstop over a long section of parchment that lay draped over his unusually-cluttered desk, "if you are quite done yelling at me, I must ask you to get in contact with a few friends. The wave swept over Hogwarts from a Westward direction, so I would be fairly confident in saying that it could have originated from the same."

"The States?" McGonagall ventured curiously.

"It's possible," Dumbledore replied. "In any case, it would help if you Floo-called Ms. Penstone of the Salem Witch Academy, Ms. Ostharia of the Canadian wizarding school Agoria Polaris, and Mrrs. Li and Genda of the Watanabe School in Japan, as well as Ms. Maxime from Beuxbatons in France and Mr. Karkaroff from Durmstrang. If you could track down one of the institutes in Africa as well, that would be wonderful; I'd like as many points of view as I can get around this." He pushed a page of parchment over to her and she picked it up. "These are their Floo-ports and, for those that have them, their passcodes. Professor Karkaroff is rather poor with the concept of freely-given trust and, if I remember correctly, you're likely to get knocked unconscious for a week if you do not have supply of all eighteen of his passwords."

McGonagall raised an eyebrow at the cheer with which her old companion said the last bit. "We all have our quirks, then," she muttered to herself, dropping her eyes to the yellowed paper.

"Indeed we do," Dumbledore replied happily, showing off his own in the form of a Lemon Drop.

Silence lasted a few contemplative moments before the Transfiguration teacher spoke again. "You wish to know whether or not they were hit by the energy – and if they were, where it came from."

"Right in one, Professor. Ten points to Gryffindor." He sucked briefly on his candy. "I have a couple old friends and faithful Aurors if it was contained within Europe, and three or four long-distance colleagues in various parts of the States. If it came from Mexico or South America or the majority of Asia, I'd need to rummage through my trunk to find a few strings to pull."

He slammed one of the enormous tomes shut – 'Magical Disasters: the Uncontrollable Forces' – and banished it back to his bookcase on the other side of the room. Another flew over to take its place, a smaller book with 'Nature's Elements, Merlin's Power' emblazoned on the cover. He immediately opened it with the flick of his wrist and began scanning its contents.

He kept talking the entire time.

Talk about multi-tasking.

"You can use my fireplace – I would prefer that you talked to them as soon as possible. If that thing is moving across the continents, then it would be of great importance and necessity to warn those whom it has not yet reached."

McGonagall nodded once and started for the ornately-bedecked fireplace tucked not-so-inconspicuously in the corner.

"Minerva."

She stopped and looked back.

Dumbledore's piercing blue eyes met hers with a solemnity rarely seen by the cheerfully loony Headmaster. "Be sure to ask them if any of their students suffered from the same condition that Mr. Potter and the others do."

"Of course." And with a pinch of glittering powder – kept royally in a converted ashtray that had been gilded gold and permanently attached to the fireplace – she went to work.

* * *

Sorry about the wait, everyone - this thing, while admittedly brilliant, is definately slow-going (both in pace and time of updating). Just letting you know that we're still going, just at Turtle-speed. I have too many other things on my plate to be able to jump up to Hare-speed. Sorry.


	3. Chapter 3 Insubstantial Proof

Chapter Three – Insubstantial Proof

-Nov 7, 11:40 pm-

Hermione Granger couldn't sleep.

Part of it was because it was only just approaching midnight, and her regular sleeping schedule dictated that she be active until closer to two in the morning, and a biological clock was a hard thing to overcome. The other part of that was because she couldn't quite quell all those pesky emotions that were in turmoil inside her.

Fear was the largest one present.

Fear for Harry, fear of whatever that blue energy was and what else it had done, fear over all this silly 'Heir of Slytherin' business, fear for Harry, her family, her education, Harry, what Petrified Mrs. Norris and who else was going to fall victim to it, Harry, Harry, Harry…

She didn't want to lose her best friend.

She wondered if she was going to break down into a terrible, weepy mess every time the boy went to the Hospital Wing; sardonically for a fourteen-year-old girl, she thought that she'd have to prepare herself for a lot of bouts like this one in the future, if trends were to continue.

Stupid, blundering, heroic, one-minded, noble, _Gryffindor_ Harry Potter. Making her worry like this.

She clutched her blanket tighter around herself.

Five minutes later, with an irritable and adorably-frustrated huff, Hermione threw her blanket off her body and slipped out of bed. She quite obviously was not about to fall asleep any time soon, not with her friend ferreted away into the Hospital Wing, unconscious and in pain and dying and _missing homework_ and tens of hundreds of other absolutely unacceptable things.

She threw on a pair of clothes, not bothering with the robe, and left the room.

She _had_ already seen him, of course, but that was _hours_ ago; she had almost tried to skip the two classes she had left to stay by Harry's bedside, as well as eat dinner with him later on, but Madame Pomfrey had spoiled both attempts and shooed her out without so much as a how-do-you-do.

Hermione had thought about what happened; honestly, she had had a very difficult time concentrating on her classes, what with Harry up in the Hospital Wing again and no one with a clue as to what happened to him or any of the other six. It was that giant blue wave thing that had flung them all about, but the real mystery was why it had only been _them_. Hermione could let Dumbledore and the staff figure out what the electric-feeling blue pulse was; _she_ wanted to know why seven students out of near one-thousand had been affected, why it was only those seven and no one else.

There had to be some connection between them – something that linked them all together. There wasn't much correlation that she could see yet, but she didn't have a lot to go on; she knew very little about Cedric Diggory, and Daphne Greengrass, and the little Lovegood girl, and she only really knew Fred and George as Ron's older brothers.

Cedric was a sixth-year student, as were Fred and George. Malfoy, Daphne, and Harry were second-year, and Luna Lovegood was first. Cedric was Hufflepuff, Malfoy and Daphne were Slytherin, Luna was Ravenclaw, and Harry, Fred, and George were Gryffindor. Cedric had brown hair, Harry had black, Fred and George had red, and Daphne, Malfoy, and Luna had varying shades of blond. Cedric, Fred, and George had brown eyes, Harry had green, Malfoy a dead-looking steel grey, and Daphne and Luna had differently-toned blues.

Hermione wondered when their birthdays were, and how strong their magic was. She wondered if any of them had a sort of magical protection on them, like Harry had his mother's love and how it had driven off Professor Quirrel last school year. She had a lot of things she had to figure out, and it was only going to make this year harder than it already was; the Polyjuice Potion would be ready soon, and they still had to interrogate Malfoy and find out what he knew about this 'Heir of Slytherin' business, plus she had her homework to worry about, and she really did need to start studying for her OWLs before they started sneaking up on her.

She walked down the stairs into the Common Room and was surprised to see a few elder-year students still up, huddled on the squishy chairs and couches nearest to the fireplace. One of them glanced back at her when she padded past; his eyes flicked between her and the main entrance, but then he just shrugged and turned back to the conversation.

Hermione stepped out of the Gryffindor Tower and into the hallway.

* * *

-11:51 pm-

Dementors were some of the foulest creatures of the wizarding world, and some of the hardest to kill.

They didn't need much to survive, Dementors. They did not sleep, nor did they necessarily starve if kept from their food source for too long – their food source was believed to be the souls of humans, gained after initiating the aptly named 'Dementor's Kiss' upon an unfortunate human. It was believed that they were dependent on humans, and only humans – as no other race in creation had been given the gift of a soul – for their own survival. It was believed that they would die out should the Ministry ever outlaw the 'death' sentence of the Dementor's Kiss.

Those beliefs are unfounded and horribly inaccurate.

Dementors prey not upon the soul, but on something far more insubstantial: emotion.

While it is true that humanoids (a category that includes such things as Centaurs, 'House' Elves, Vampires, and the like) are the only beings to hold the spiritual entity known as a 'soul' inside them, raw emotion is something that is felt by every living thing. Every plant and animal on the planet, magical or not, owning of a soul or not, have the instinctual want, the strive, for survival. Evolution, the process of an organism changing its behavior or physical structure to adapt to a like-changing environment, is evidence of it; every living thing will try their damndest to survive, and keep surviving, and as a counterpoint will avoid their extermination through any means possible. They evaded destruction because they instinctually knew their being would cease to be if they did not flee. At some level, without a conscious human-like mind or the complexities of a soul, they shied away from eradication; they feared their death.

And that was something every living thing shared.

Fear.

And it was fear that Dementors craved. They had evolved over the centuries, shrouded in darkness and warped by mankind and their magics, until they were able to live off that one, all-encompassing emotion. They lusted after it with predatorial single-mindedness, and it was as substantial and delectable as raw meat to a tiger.

Souls were a delicacy to them. They could live off fear, true, but the opportunity of devouring not just fear, but _all_ emotions from a single being, was something of a smorgasbord, akin to a full-stocked buffet with only the best five-star meals available.

The Ministry claimed that there were none of the monsters outside of their control and influence; approximately two hundred were stationed at Azkaban and in the surrounding area, and a few dozen were in the Ministry itself, kept under lock and key and heavily-warded doors for when a quick, on-the-spot execution was claimed a necessity.

However, the Ministry, being as it was, was unprepared for the consequences of 'their' Dementors turning against them. When the energy pulse washed over Azkaban, the foul beasts had started a frenzy, 'kissing' every inmate they could get their mottled green hands on and driving the ones they could not reach past the breaking point when they converged on individual cells. Over three-fourths of the Ministry's Aurors had been deployed to the prison to restore order, and only now – twelve hours later – was something close to order being finally attained.

Of course, that probably had more to do with the fact that there were only eighteen Dementors left at Azkaban than anything the Aurors actually did. They had tried to ensnare the fleeing creatures in a veritable net of Patroni, but that had failed when the mass of over one hundred Dementors rushed straight towards it.

Auror Jenks had never known a Patronus could shatter before then; but he had bore witness to his own silver rhinoceros being savagely ripped apart by the darkness as the Dementors burst free.

He shook his head.

His partner, newbie Auror Jonathan P. Wilson, had been kissed by the Dementors inside the Ministry; they had gone berserk in there, too, and somehow escaped their pens and attacked the populace. Wilson hadn't stood a chance. Neither had four other Ministry workers, or two children visiting their parents at work.

Azkaban was a wreck. A little over half of the cells had been demolished in the feeding frenzy, and the prison was stocked full of criminals. Luckily, however, two-thirds of the inmates had been Kissed or otherwise torn apart, leaving plenty of room for the last few living prisoners. A lot of the protective spells and wards in the prison had been destroyed, and if any prisoner would decide to jailbreak, there was a fair probability of it succeeding. With the last eighteen Dementors being kept in one of the warded rooms of the dungeons – so they didn't have an opportunity to go nuts and break out again – it was left to the Aurors to keep watch of the prisoners, as well as move them to their new cells.

Jenks, one of the highest-qualified Aurors stationed in Azkaban, was in charge of transporting the Level 3 prisoners.

He had already moved Dolohov, Rookwood, and the male Lestranges to their prospective facilities. Next up was…

He banged his wand on the bars of the cell in front of him, ringing the enchanted metals like a gong; they reverberated low, a dull noise that hit heavily against the walls of the cell before dissipating.

"Inmate! Get up!" There was a shuffling in the darkness of the cell, but the confined and condemned prisoner did not appear. Jenks rapped the bars again and he heard a quiet whimpering, the panicked noise of a cornered animal. But when he cast Lumos and peered in through the bars, all he saw was the dark outline of a body sprawled beside the chamberpot. "Inmate!" he said again, his voice commanding. "I'm here to escort you to your new cell."

* * *

-11:57 pm-

Hermione reached the Hospital Wing just before midnight.

She hesitantly touched her fingers to the large wooden double-doors and, when no harm befell her, pushed hard against the left with both hands. The door opened without a sound and she slid inside, closing it behind her.

Once inside, she slunk quickly to the right and nestled herself in the shadows of the corner; for two minutes she stood there, unmoving, waiting to see whether or not Madame Pomfrey would come bursting out of her office, wand brandished like a sword and mad enough to breathe flame. Madame Pomfrey was a strict believer in Visitor's Hours, and ruled her Wing with an iron fist; Hermione didn't want to know what punishment she'd be assigned if she was caught sneaking around the patients' beds after hours. And the points that'd be taken! She winced at the very thought of it.

But then her eyes locked back onto the seven filled beds lining the far wall – and her mind flashed back to the Quidditch game and she saw Harry get hit by the Bludger, then the energy wave, and she saw him fall and hit the ground, and she saw Fred and George fall and Malfoy smash into the red and gold stands, and she saw Cedric get catapulted out of his seat and into the air towards the Forbidden Forest and she heard that terrible screaming, the shriek of a banshee – and she straightened up.

Harry was more important than any amount of points, or a House Cup.

With one last glance at the office door, steel in her eyes, Hermione walked carefully, but quickly, to the bed closest to the entranceway; Harry's bed.

He didn't look bad. Of course, anything on Harry that didn't involve a missing limb or a very large hole was considered 'not bad'. Reckless boy.

He still had the bandages wrapped around his cranium, hiding the majority of his hair. He was sweating slightly; it was rather hot in the Hospital Wing, Hermione noted. His left arm was curled in slightly, his hand a loose fist that rested against his evenly rising and falling stomach. His right arm was held rigidly at his side, immobile – mediwitches used petrification spells in place of the casts and splints of the Muggle world. The sheets on the bed were thrown to the side, presumably in an attempt to stave off the heat.

She clucked her tongue disapprovingly, and made quick work of folding the sheets into a neat pile at the foot of the bed. She nodded to herself and went back to the side of the bed; a stool was pressed up against the wall, and she paused to brush away an old spiderweb that clung to it and the bedpost before taking her seat.

It felt better, she thought as she watched his chest rise and fall with each breath, to be able to see him. To be able to know for sure that he was okay, even for the moment. There was no doubt or panic beating a tattoo in her breast if she could reach out and touch him and prove that her fears were unfounded.

He looked like he was sleeping.

She let out a huff, thinking how it was unfair that he was getting rest while she wasn't. Although, after getting beaten around by a solid pig-iron sphere and thrown four hundred feet to the ground, he deserved as much rest as he needed, whether it be seven hours or thirty-seven. She wasn't about to seriously begrudge him that.

Slowly, as the seconds passed into minutes, she relaxed from the rigid posture she'd been holding and let the sounds of the room wash over her; the rustle of sheets, the creak of bedsprings, the various breathing patterns of each student on each bed. She didn't know how long she was sitting there – it could have been thirty seconds, or thirty minutes – when her eyes started to close, or when she began drifting off into unconsciousness.

She just knew that her eyes snapped open the moment the sounds in the room changed, and her head whirled around, away from Harry's bed, and she looked down the row at the curled up, shaking figure of the little first-year girl. Even from her place by Harry, she could hear the protesting squeaks of the bedsprings as Luna Lovegood rocked back and forth, and she could hear her whispering, her voice still weak and sore, whispering words into the pillow she had clutched to her chest.

"_No no no no no no no," _Luna pleaded desperately, sobbing softly into the only thing she could hold onto.

Hermione practically jumped off her stool, her mind warring between going over and offering comfort, and fetching Madame Pomfrey, and she had just turned in the direction of the office door when the large oak double-doors of the entryway burst open; the force would have slammed the doors into the walls and possibly off their hinges had there not been cushioning charms placed in the proper areas.

Panicking, Hermione dropped to the ground and shuffled herself under the bed next to Harry's – Greengrass' bed.

Professor Dumbledore came first, dressed in a long woolly gown and a nightcap, walking into the room backwards and carrying what looked like some kind of statue or carving based on its rigidity and, if his hunching was any indication, weight. Professor McGonagall came up in the rear, still in her robes, holding the other end of the object and looking a little flushed. They carefully maneuvered to one of the open beds lined up on the other wall, and deposited the statue gently onto the bed.

In a low tone, Dumbledore told his companion to fetch Madame Pomfrey. Not two minutes later, she was standing over the bed too, asking what had happened.

"Another attack," Dumbledore replied in a somber tone. He quickly explained how Minerva had been doing her midnight rounds and had found him on the stairs.

Hermione, for her part, was terribly confused, and she was scared again. Attack? Again? And he had said that that statue-looking-thing was somebody…?

Her mind flashed back to Mrs. Norris, and her blood froze in her veins.

She was brought out of the whirlwind of her thoughts by the harsh, offending odor of burning plastic. She looked up at the adults to see them staring down at a warped-looking camera; Madame Pomfrey and Professor McGonagall with varying degrees of confusion, and Professor Dumbledore an alarming amalgam of horror and solemn acceptance.

"What does this _mean_, Albus?" Hermione heard McGonagall whisper, her no-nonsense voice demanding an answer.

There was a short pause, and a sorrowful sigh, and Dumbledore said, "It means that the Chamber of Secrets is indeed open again."

_The Chamber of Secrets._

_The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the Heir, beware._

_Water. Mrs. Norris, petrified._

_Enemies of the Heir, beware._

"_You'll be next, Mudbloods!"_

_Petrified. "You'll be next-" Colin Creevey, lying motionless on the bed "You'll be next, Mudbloods!"_

_Malfoy._

With her heart pounding and her breath coming out in quick, uneven, panicked bursts, Hermione Granger slid out from under the bed and got to her feet, staying low and out of sight of the staff members.

_Malfoy had been in his bed when she entered the Hospital Wing._

Carefully, so carefully, she craned her head over the mattress and over its occupant, stretched until the last bed, the bed by the window, fell into her sight.

_Malfoy's bed._

The pillow was leaning in a pummeled heap against the headboard, and the sheets had been strewn about, one of them lying almost fully on the stone floor. And it was empty.

Malfoy was gone.

* * *

Hey guys - here's the update I promised. If you've read any of my recent chapters in my other stories, you'll have noticed me talking about a 6-month deployment coming up. In case you haven't, here: I'm in the Navy, and I'm going to be gone until June. Therefore, there is a high probability that this story, and the others, will not be updated until June or July. There is a chance of updating before then, but that depends entirely on Port choices and internets connections. I'll see you when I see you.

Moving on - oh snap! Malfoy was gone when Colin got hisself petrified! Hermione and Ron are going to be more convinced about Malfoy's guilt then they ever were in Canon, and a lot more annoying. How'd you like the Lesson on Dementors?

's all I got. Peace out.


	4. Chapter 4 Headline News

Chapter Four – Headline News

Nov. 8, 7:12 am

Ron moodily poked at his breakfast.

This was something of an odd sight for his fellow Gryffindors, as Ron was largely known for letting his stomach outdo his mind, and rarely, if ever, allowed his emotions to put him off of food. Seamus Finnegan was unabashedly staring at the redhead, his own two plates remaining untouched.

Ron wasn't feeling well. Well, that's not true – physically, he was perfectly fine; good health, no fever or nasty cough or anything. But there was what felt like a very cold rock inside his body, sitting just above his navel and stubbornly refusing to move. It gnawed away at his stomach and left him quite unenthusiastic for his morning meal. He was fully aware of the odd looks he was receiving, but he couldn't bring himself to be embarrassed by them.

He was worried. More than that, he was concerned.

Those who knew Ron Weasley knew that it was very difficult to get him genuinely worried; he was a very easy-going person, and didn't let things bother him too much. Sure, his temper wasn't the easiest thing to keep under control, but there was a vast difference between sending him off and making him worry. After all, a good majority of the time he was in good health, as were those he cared for, he himself was cared for – fed, watered, getting to sleep in a bed and take a shower and the like – and his life wasn't being threatened (something which, if patterns held true, would become a regular occurrence, much to his dismay).

But now…

…now, Harry was hurt. Hurt bad. His best mate was lying up in the Hospital wing, unconscious, after having been pummeled by a Bludger resulting in one broken arm and a cracked-open skull, and then falling off his broom four-hundred feet above the ground. And if Dumbledore hadn't been as great as he was, it would have been much, much worse.

But that wasn't even the end of it: his two older brothers were up there, too. After free-falling from a similar height to the ground and snapping one arm each in the process, Fred and George got their own beds in the Hospital Wing and had not yet woken up. He had talked to Madame Pomfrey, and the medi-witch hadn't a clue what the cause of that was; she had ruled out concussions and tumors and exhaustion and a host of other things, and the only thing she could go on to say with any certainty was that she could not explain it.

Needless to say, this didn't exactly instill hope towards their condition; nor did it inspire faith in Madame Pomfrey's abilities.

So focused was Ron on his thoughts – and on repositioning his breakfast on its plate – that he didn't even notice when Hermione came up beside him.

She was already talking, and didn't pause her breath as she swung her bag off her shoulder, dropped it to the floor, and collapsed into the seat next to him. She continued talking, one long stream of unintelligible consciousness, talking about classes and Harry and the blue pulse and wondering what it all was and something about Creevey and the Hospital Wing and Malfoy –

"Malfoy?" Ron asked suddenly, perking up and taking notice. "Wait, where'd you come from, Hermione?"

Her answering frown was not an attractive sight. And when her companion could only stare at her, bewildered, and ask her why she was looking at him like that, she gave up with a deep sigh and an annoyed shake of her head.

She put a few slices of toast on her plate and scraped a few scoops of jam over them, just as something to calm her down a little, before she spoke again. Her voice had dropped from a rushed babble – easily discernable, volume-wise – to a hushed conversation-level, or a loud whisper. "I went up to see Harry last night-"

"Yeah, so did I," Ron cut in. "I was there too, remember? It was around 8 when Madame Pomfrey kicked us out, right?"

"No, Ron," Hermione said urgently. "I went back after curfew, and-"

"_What?"_

The Great Hall quieted for a few seconds, and all eyes locked onto Ron Weasley. Then, slowly, the noise began to build up again as his outburst was passed off as unimportant. A good half of the Gryffindors present were still casting strange glances down the length of the table, and Hermione had the good grace to blush. Ron didn't seem to notice, so wrapped up was he in the very thought of someone like the know-it-all of their year going and willingly breaking a rule like that.

"Ron, _shut up_," Hermione hissed, yanking him back down into his seat. "And _close your mouth_ – it's disgusting." His mouth closed with a _clack_, and he blinked and shook his head, as if to toss off his shock.

He scootched a little closer to her and said, in a whisper, "Sorry – so you went to the Hospital Wing after curfew…"

Hermione swallowed and continued on. "I went in and I just sat over by Harry's bed for a while; I was having trouble sleeping, I was really worried about him, so I went up to check on him. The next thing I know, Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall burst through the doors, carrying Colin Creevey."

"Colin?" Ron repeated. "Doesn't sound familiar."

"He's one of the first years, Ron; he's completely enamored with Harry."

"Is he the squirt that's been following him around with a camera?"

"Yes, Ron. And don't call him that."

The redhead shrugged and plowed on. "Okay, so why were they carrying him into the Hospital Wing?"

"He was petrified."

There was a long moment where he thought in silence on the word; when the implication sunk in, his face grew pale, causing his freckles to stand out in stark contrast. He swallowed thickly and said, "Like – like Mrs. Norris?" Hermione nodded. "Bloody hell…" Then he blinked and looked at her. "You said something about Malfoy." It wasn't a question.

Hermione nodded again. "He wasn't in the Hospital Wing when Colin was petrified."

"I _knew_ it!"

He had jumped to his feet again and garnered the brief attention of the majority of the Great Hall once more. She yanked him back down into his seat for the second time and told him off in a sharp voice. Despite quieting down, Ron ended up more annoyed than contrite by the scolding, and he kept glancing over at the Slytherin table with a haughty look.

Hermione sighed in frustration; she had needed to tell _someone_ about the Hospital Wing, but it seemed like choosing Ron as that someone could have been an error in judgment. If Harry had been there, she'd have chosen him over Ron, easily – despite the rivalry between Harry and Malfoy, Harry was by and far more constrained with his disdain; he might dislike the Slytherin greatly, but he wouldn't go to the lengths of battering down and humiliating him like Ron might be tempted to do.

She was cut off from further thinking as the morning mail delivery began; an enormous collection of owls and minor assorted birds swooped into the castle through the towering windows, where the glass had vanished to allow their passage. A small brown owl practically dive-bombed onto her plate, smashing into one of her pieces of toast and sending jam everywhere. On its leg was a small bag, and when it got to its feet, it proudly proffered it to her. She reached into it and withdrew her copy of the Daily Prophet – she'd ordered a subscription in the beginning of the year – and replaced it with a few knuts. The owl chirruped in satisfaction, helped itself to some of the broken toast, and took to the air.

She picked it up and the headline was both as she suspected and as she hoped for; regarding the events that happened the previous day, it stated in big, bolded letters:

_**MYSTERIOUS ENERGY WAVE SWEEPS OVER BRITAIN**_

The article, which took up the entire front page but managed to say very little beyond what she already knew, described what they'd all seen firsthand; a blue mass of energy moving across the land like a tidal wave. The injuries at Hogwarts had not been included, and there were no other odd instances like it mentioned. The Ministry of Magic 'refused to comment or speculate on the unexplained phenomenon or its origins', but made it a point to assure the masses that at this point in time, 'it did not seem Dark in nature' and that the Department of Mysteries was trying their damndest to figure the entire event out.

The next page boasted the only-slightly-smaller headline of '_**Dementors Gone Mad – who guards us from our guards?'**__. _This, being something that Hermione had not heard about, instantly gained her attention. Dementors, she knew, were the watchmen of the wizarding prison of Azkaban; they had the foul ability of whittling away at a person's emotions, sucking away their happiness and joy and whatever else and leaving only despair and madness. They were almost solely stationed on Azkaban, in a colony bordering on the two-hundred range, with a few locked up in the bowels of the Ministry for trials and executions.

If she didn't hate the vile creatures so much, Hermione might have felt bad for them.

The article stated that at approximately twelve o'clock the previous afternoon – the same approximate time that the blue energy wave swept the land – all the Dementors under Ministry control had gone into some sort of frenzy. They had turned on their handlers and begun 'kissing' every human that they possibly could, both in Azkaban and in the Ministry; in the Ministry, the defenses and safety precautions that supposedly kept the monsters on a leash, so to speak, seemed to have been momentarily screwed up by the appearance of the blue wave, allowing them to escape from their own prisons. In Azkaban, the Dementors had swarmed over the prison population, along with the few Aurors stationed there. Over half of the inmates had died – it wasn't specified how. The reporter guessed that the blue wave and the Dementor's behavior were linked somehow, and quoted a 'Ministry Official' as having agreed that 'the two did seem to be connected' and that it was a huge coincidence if they were not; the reporter went on to say that word had not been given to explain their behavior, nor the exact numbers of the deceased. And another anonymous ministry employee was quoted as saying that 'the Dementors that had used the riot in order to flee from their positions at Azkaban Prison have been recaptured and detained', and that 'the prison, with the remaining prisoners and its hopefully soon-to-be-destroyed wealth of Dark Creature 'guards'', was now under the control of a great number of the Ministry's top Aurors.

The rest of the paper was tame by comparison, and it took her little time before she was finished. She folded it up and put it into her bookbag. With a glance at Ron, whose concentration had fallen onto his food as per normal, she picked up a piece of her toast and took a bite.

The energy, Harry, Dementors…

…what was going on?

* * *

-Nov. 8, 8:00 am-

It was dark.

He didn't know why it was dark, or how long he'd been in the dark – such thoughts and concerns evaded him – but he knew that he was in the dark and he knew that this didn't bother him nearly as much as it usually would.

He didn't usually like the dark.

It hadn't always been dark, though, even though he didn't know how long it had been that way. He recalled bright lights – white, red, orange, blue, blue the worst, blue the most threatening – and faded colors – grey, rust-red, and the soothing, dark, deep purple. He recalled bone-white and gleaming silver. He remembered the moon – twisted, inverted, not the same moon he saw in the night sky.

He heard chanting, and words that burned. He heard cheering and screaming. He heard a voice whispering, hissing like a snake, spitting like a cat, screeching like a falcon, whispering and telling him hidden things, secret things, telling him to talk back, to tell his own secrets to the darkness.

He didn't want to.

His hands swam into view, thin and stark white in comparison with the rippling shadows, and he brought them both to his face. He ran his fingers through his hair once, before massaging his temples; it felt like he had a troll pounding away at the inside of his skull.

Slowly, the shadows began to dissipate. Black softened to grey, and his focus sharpened and details began jumping out at him: a wall, a floor. Tables. Chairs. Window. Light.

He hissed briefly as the sunlight slammed into his eye sockets, squinting to block it out and keep it from adding on to his headache.

He was in a classroom…Hogwarts. Why was he in a classroom?

He shakily climbed to his feet.

The last thing he remembered…he remembered dreams. Dark dreams, filled with fire and screams, and strange dreams, filled with blue and purple and an unearthly silence. But before that…

…flying?

Quidditch. He was playing Quidditch – Slytherin vs Gryffindor. Potter had been getting attacked by that crazy Bludger, and he had hung back, wary of getting the same treatment…he had seen Potter, arm broken, practically delirious, dive after the Snitch…he'd caught it...and then…?

He couldn't remember seeing anything after that – just noises: the roar of thunder, the crack of lightning. He heard screaming. Then there was pain. Then…nothing. The dreams. Nothing.

How did he get here?

If he were injured during the game – which he was quite certain that he was, based on the tight tenderness of his wrist, the ache of his jaw, and the way his tongue felt three times too big in his mouth and cut bolts of pain through the muscle when he tried to move it – he would have been in the Hospital Wing, with the ever-fretting Madame Pomfrey bullying him around; he was convinced that he _had been_ in the Hospital Wing sometime between the Quidditch game and the present, seeing as how he was just hurting instead of bleeding heavily, but he couldn't find reason as to why he wasn't _still_ there.

He looked out the window, still squinting.

He was in a classroom on the second floor, and the Hospital Wing was on the third floor – on the other side of the castle. His muddled mind couldn't come up with a reason for why, exactly, this was so. It didn't make sense.

He looked down at himself, and at the floor. His robes were missing, but he was dressed in his underclothes; sharply-pressed pants and a white-collared cotton shirt, half-unbuttoned. His polished shoes were gone; his feet were covered by his black socks. Just beside his foot lay a familiar-looking length of wood.

His wand.

He picked it up and slipped it into his pocket. Then he re-buttoned his shirt, tucked it into his pants and smoothed out his hair, and he walked over to the door, opened it, and exited the room. He turned right and began heading down the stairwell.

He should have been getting back up to the Hospital Wing, but he had more important things on his mind. Professor Snape would want to know what had happened.

Draco Malfoy headed down to the dungeons, and the ache of his injuries throbbed with every step of the way.

* * *

-Nov. 8, 8:08 am-

Albus Dumbledore sighed heavily.

His thin, knotted fingers traced over a world map like the keyboard of a piano, tapping a country here, a key there, a city elsewhere. A few dozen points on the map were circled with various colors of ink – some black, some blue, some bright red. The bright red points almost formed a sort of ring around the States, spreading outward over the map like a plague; the blue points were few in number, and seemed to be clustered mainly in the Middle East, in Russia, and Africa; the black points were sparsely set, dispersed unevenly among both the red and the blue.

His finger rested on a red circle over Scotland, and he sighed once again.

The red was the schools hit by the mysterious blue wave; blue was the ones it had not yet hit. Black was for schools they'd been unable to get into contact with.

Minerva had been up the entire night, Floo-calling the Heads of every major magical institution in the world; she'd used his fireplace while he visited several libraries across several continents looking for theories or explanations for the blue energy wave. As it stood, he was no closer to the truth than he was almost an entire day ago. Minerva had been more successful, and as a small reward he had allowed her to take the day off in order to catch up on the rest she'd missed; her classes had been cancelled for the day. From what she'd found out through her widespread investigation, it seemed that their original conclusion had been the correct one: the Energy had emanated from the States, from the mid-west.

As a favor to Minerva, Ms. Penstone of Salem had agreed to get in contact with a few of her own friends, and as of six o'clock this morning, she had assured him that two teams of US Auror-equivalents were investigating the phenomenon, and were quite positive that it would be wrapped up in a matter of days. There was no further specification yet on the location, but one could not hope for miracles, even in the magical world.

But if there was ever a time for miracles to start showing up…

Dumbledore placed his head into his hands and rubbed at his tired eyes.

He hadn't been too concerned when Mrs. Norris was petrified. There were a great many things that were capable of causing petrification – spells, potions, a few magical plants, and of course magical creatures – and the majority of them were relatively harmless. The message on the wall was ominous, but quite possible just as harmless as the petrification, and he was not too concerned when he put it out of his mind in order to focus on Lucius Malfoy's newest attempts at strong-arming several departments in the Ministry.

But now there was a human victim. A student. A child, under his protection.

And what had been an inconvenience had now become unacceptable.

He could not hail the Department of Magical Law Enforcement for assistance, at least not this early. While there was something going on here, there was little that the Aurors would be able to discover at this juncture, be they competent or not. One victim (technically two, but a non-magical, non-sentient animal was not a liable concern), not even technically dead, was not a case that any investigating agency, let alone the DMLE, would follow up on.

He had no choice but to figure the situation out internally; and really, he liked it better that way. He was able to hold all the pieces that way – stay in control of the game. It wouldn't do to lose the influence he had in his many social and political circles, and keeping his school safe despite its inherent dangers was just one of the many things that illustrated his power to those around him.

He would solve this; he'd solve it before anyone else was struck down by the Petrification.

Before anyone died.

* * *

-Nov. 8, 9:30 am-

He stood before her desk, posture rigid, hands clasped tightly behind his back. His steel-blue eyes never wavered from her dark brown, even as, each time she opened her mouth, her words came out sharper than a sword, as accusation on accusation were laid upon him.

How he'd failed to prevent the escape of a half-dozen of Azkaban's worst criminals.

How he'd failed to protect the other Aurors.

How he'd failed to keep the security of Azkaban as tight as it should have been.

How he'd failed to make sure his subordinates were properly trained for the event that had occurred.

How, now, several people were quietly – for now – accusing him of conspiracy, of aiding and abetting the escape of those half-dozen criminals.

Because he was Auror Simon Ulysses Jenks, right? Decorated hero of the last War? Highest-rated Auror of Azkaban for the last ten years? Caster of the most powerful Patronus of the entire Ministry Auror Corp?

If Jenks didn't want you to leave Azkaban – you weren't leaving.

Right?

That was the line of reasoning for people like Rufus Scrimgeour, and Alastor Moody – two bitter old war veterans with more collective paranoia than his mother back in the States. They wanted him locked up in his own damned prison; they wanted him dead - Scrimgeour much more than Moody. Jenks was pretty sure that, while Moody did want to see Jenks pay for his _apparent_ crime, he would be in something of a good mood now that he had prey to hunt once again. It had been too long since 'Mad-Eye' Moody had a challenge.

Auror Jenks looked Madame Bones square in the eye, and she looked right back.

"Head Auror Scrimgeour is trying to build a case against you as we speak," she said evenly. "It is his belief that you, directly, had a hand in the escape of those fugitives. Your overwhelming knowledge of Azkaban Prison, coupled with the power that you hold over it, its other guards, and its prisoners, make you a prime suspect to him; the fact that you had one of the most dangerous of them out of his cell for relocation when the Dementors broke the wards and attacked – _again _– does not help things for you, either."

Jenks didn't move a muscle at the accusations. "Understood, ma'am," he said. He understood, all right. He understood that they – Scrimgeour, mainly – were trying to screw him over for something that wasn't his fault. Scrimgeour had his eye on Amelia Bones' position, and he intended to knock down any contenders beforehand. Plus, the Ministry was searching desperately for an explanation as to _what happened_, and they needed their scapegoat. It seemed Scrimgeour, in addition to his own goals, was quite happy in assisting them as well.

"Jenks – Simon," Bones said, sighing, "we worked together for a long time during the War. I _know _that you had nothing to do with what happened." She took off her monocle and rubbed tiredly at that eye. "But I still require your report – your statement – and I will have to put you into custody for a short time."

Jenks allowed himself a small sigh and a frown. "Yes, ma'am," he said. Stiffly, he drew his wand from its holster and, stepping forward, set it gently on her desk. Two Aurors – Dawlish, Proudfoot, he recognized them both – entered through the large double doors and led him away.

The doors closed behind them.

* * *

Well, it's been...nine months. I'll tell you, this story doesn't write itself - this's hard to put down, and I have to force myself down once in a Blue Moon (hah! see what I did there?) just to churn out a page or two. This's easily one of the harder stories to hash out, and that's probably because _I've already got it planned out_. I never thought following an outline would be so difficult - it seemed so easy on highschool English papers!

I didn't originally intend Jenks to be a Major character, but in these last nine months, he's gotten twisted around and added on to a little bit, so he'll be more important than I had originally thought. As for why he's getting bitched-out by Bones, it has to do with Azkaban; see, what happened was - for the ignorant - that when the Blue Wave hit yesterday, the Dementors went nuts. Wrecked the prison, killed the inmates, fled into the night, etc. They (only 18 left) were then locked away through magical means while the Aurors took control. Then, at midnight, the magic (spells, wards, runes, whatever) didn't work in the Blue Time and the Dementors (they get FUN inside Midnight...) escaped again and had an entire hour to kill people before the Blue Time fell and they were rounded up / destroyed. Hope that clears things up; I wasn't sure how to sneak that information into the story without it coming off as stilted / lame.

Anyway, this'll update eventually - don't expect any miracles, it'll probably be another half-year. Sorry. Next chapter, though Harry wakes up into Midnight. It's going to be fun.


	5. Chapter 5 The Looking Glass

Chapter Five – The Looking Glass through Broken Glasses

-time unknown-

He was floating.

Voices murmured around him, passing and fading, loud and quiet; he was aware that he was stationary, and that time was passing around him, but those thoughts were fleeting and inconsequential. Time passed, and he heard voices, heard sounds, some muffled, some clear, and they washed over him like the tide of the ocean, swirling around him, suspending him in animation.

Floating.

Bliss.

He wasn't in pain; wasn't being sneered at, scorned, or feared; he wasn't the Boy-Who-Lived, wasn't a freak, wasn't the Heir of Slytherin; he wasn't scared; he wasn't tired; he just…_was_. It was the most free he had ever felt, more than watching the Dursleys disappear in the distance as they drove away from the train station, more than that first majestic sight of Hogwarts, more, even, than his first experience on a broomstick.

He was floating in nothing, and he was peaceful, and he was free.

But slowly, very slowly, the nothing began to turn to something. The passage of time that was so difficult to place or take track of began to slow; voices slowed, became clearer; sounds stopped their spanning echo and focused into something he could recognize. The soothing darkness (or was it light?) that he was held in began to distort, and crack. It splintered, slowly, as the Real World began to intrude.

He half expected to awake to someone looking down upon him; Hermione, perhaps, or Madame Pomfrey fussing over him. A familiar face, someone to greet. At the very least, he thought he would see _someone_ around, someone moving.

But when he broke free of the abyss that was his unconsciousness and forced his eyes open, he was greeted only by silence and stillness.

Ordinarily, in a normal day, this would not be a problem; because the first thing he noticed was that it was dark outside, and that the moon hung high in the sky; undoubtedly, it was rather far into the night, and to expect someone to be hanging out at such a late hour would be ridiculous…

…but there was something…_wrong_ with it all. The stillness was just _too_ still – no fluttering of curtains, no small twitches of movement from the other occupants of the Hospital Wing, no some-or-other creatures lurking about – and the silence _too silent_ – it was absolute, and there was no wind blowing or animals howling from the forest, no protesting moaning of the old castle, or noises of discomfort from the others around him.

And everything was blue.

A shiver worked its way down his body, from the base of his neck all the way down his spine, and his skin broke out in gooseflesh.

He sat up abruptly and ducked his head, hissing in pain, as the back of his skull flared up momentarily; he grit his teeth and forced his breathing to even out, and the pain lessened considerably to a dull, pounding throb across his scalp. He grimaced each time the pain thumped through his skull, but deemed it well enough; he frowned and rotated his right arm, bending and unbending it, wincing at the soreness of his magically-cobbled-together elbow and, indeed, the collective soreness of his entire body.

When he had stretched himself sufficiently and worked out the worst of the kinks, aches, and pains, he turned himself and swung his feet out and to the floor. Idly noting that the stone floor was a lot warmer than it had any right being so late at night, he stood up.

He took a few minutes to stretch his legs and lower body before turning to the task at hand: what in all bleeding hells was going on here?

He supposed it could be a dream – but if it was, it was the most Aware dreaming he'd ever experienced. If it was a dream, he'd have been swearing up and down that he was conscious right now…

He needed to have a look around. But first…

He glanced down at himself; in particular, the hospital gown that garbed him.

He wasn't about to go running about in that flimsy sheet of fabric, dream or no dream.

He threw on his pants, trousers, and jumper – they'd been folded and neatly placed on the small table next to his bed – and was just going to grab his wand off of the same small table when he paused.

On the table, directly next to his wand, lay his glasses. They seemed to be in the same shape as when the Quidditch game ended; frames bent, twisted, one of the lenses completely gone, the other decorated with a spiderweb of cracks. He'd have to beg Hermione for some help in repairing them later, but these things were not what stopped him.

He could see them – see _everything_. In detail. He wasn't any expert on eyesight, but he was sure that his eyesight right now – it _had_ to be a dream, now, people didn't just suddenly get 20/20 vision overnight – was on par, no, _better_, than when he was ever _wearing _his glasses.

A strange giddiness passed through him, and he couldn't help but smile; this was easily one of the best dreams he'd had since he'd entered Hogwarts, no matter the strangeness. No nightmares about hideous beasts, or his new friends getting hurt, or Voldemort or Quirrel or anything, or the basic mundane dreams of falling or just plodding around the castle, had ever touched on his eyesight, and it thrilled him to be able to _see_ everything so clearly – like everyone else did.

If this was a dream – and he was sure, he was _sure_, that it was – he was going to enjoy it the best he could.

He picked up his wand and slipped it into his pocket, turned, and left the Hospital Wing; his glasses, broken, were left on the bedside table.

* * *

Unbeknownst to one Harry Potter, two ice-blue eyes followed his movement; and when he _finally _made his way out of the Hospital Wing, the owner sighed and sat up. They swallowed, ran a hand through their hair, and sighed again.

They had been close; if they'd not Seen him before opening their eyes, they might have made their presence known too early. He didn't need to know about them just yet.

While it could still all be an extreme form of lucid dreaming, they speculated, and the people in it still only imaginary, they weren't going to let their guard down; if it was a dream, then it was simply a ridiculously-paranoid precaution. But if it wasn't…

It was always better to be safe than sorry.

The blue eyes cast to the other empty beds.

They'd prefer if they could follow all of them at once, but their Sight was not gifted in such an area; and if they had to keep an eye on only one of them…

They threw the sheets off of them, exposing casual clothing; not bothering to grab their wand, they crammed on a pair of trainers and left the Hospital Wing quickly, trailing after the oblivious Boy-Who-Lived.

* * *

Harry made his way down the stairwell at a light jog, his feet slapping soundlessly against the stone. As he went, he looked at everything that he could, marveling at the change that seemingly-perfect vision offered him; everything was so _clear_, detailed, like he'd never seen it before.

It would have been better, he thought, if everything wasn't blue.

The color stained everything, it seemed; no, not stained. It almost seemed like everything was _glowing _with the color, dully emitting the color from every crack and crevice, from every direction; by that logic – if there was any logic at all – there should not have been shadows, but shadows there were, jutting out in all directions, cast from unknown sources of light.

As he went, distracted as he was, his eyes still managed to pick up on small things; little details that he wouldn't have ordinarily noticed, but for some reason did, and for some reason thought them something important...

…things like the classic torches lining the walls; the fire, in particular, and how it was frozen blue just like everything else, but how it seemed almost to pulse with some form of energy as he passed.

….things like the suits of armor that were stationed throughout the stairs and the corridors, and how they gave off a peculiar shine that didn't seem to _fit_ with everything else.

…things like the shadows, and how they seemed to move in the corners of his eyes, when he wasn't looking.

…things like those odd blind spots when he glanced out the occasional window; splotches on his otherwise-perfect sight, blemishes, like a heat haze suspended in place.

He didn't know what it was about them, but when he noticed them, they snagged his attention and his mind and he could no longer _not _notice them, over and over again.

He made it to the ground floor without hassle, and went through the Great Hall briskly; he wanted to see what the outside was like in this frozen world; he wanted to look closer at those out-of-focus spots; he wanted to see the moon.

The entrance doors were unnaturally heavy, he found out. Usually, normally, they would ease open with the smallest effort, but now, frozen in time as they were, he had to push with every ounce of his twelve-year-old strength to move it even half a meter – not an enormous distance, but certainly enough for him to slip his thin form through.

The first thing he noticed when he stumbled out onto the cobbled pathway outside the castle doors was the lake – how it, unlike everything else, didn't seem to glow with that incandescent blue, but instead seemed to almost absorb all the light around it, creating an enormous slate of black glass that stretched across the grounds. He thought he saw it ripple, thought he saw something move in its depths, but when he looked again, it was smooth, calm, and undisturbed.

The second thing he noticed was the moon. Specifically, how _not _the moon it actually was. It was in the right place in the sky, and it seemed to be the right size and shape of the moon, but as much as it was, it also just was _not_. It was something different…like a photograph negative of the moon. Instead of giving off the blue glow, it instead seemed to glow…_black_…or glow nothing? It was like when you stared at the sun too long and that sun-spot gets burned into your vision, warping and changing and blurring everything else you look at.

His eyes began to water, staring at it, and he tore his gaze away. It landed on the trees that lined the edge of the grounds; dark, twisted, spanning an untold acres and holding within untold dangers.

The Forbidden Forest.

Only…

…it was out of focus.

Harry frowned and squinted, rubbing at his eyes and looking again. The Forest, at least all that he could see of it, remained stubbornly out of focus; like the blotches that dotted the grounds here and there, the unknown blemishes, only it seemed to cover the entire Forest. And looking at it, taking in the enormous shape of shadow, he couldn't help but shiver. Because something _wasn't right_ with the Forbidden Forest. He didn't know what it was, but…

…but he didn't like this dream anymore.

He turned on his heel and, shivering again, he walked back into the castle. With an effort, he managed to pull the entrance door closed once more.

And from the treeline, intelligent purple eyes watched him go.

* * *

In another portion of the castle, two figures stood. Neither one of them moved, but only one of them was forced to be that way.

One of them was an elder-year, a Ravenclaw Prefect named Penelope Clearwater.

The other was a second-year Slytherin named Draco Malfoy.

The eyes of one studied the form of the other intently, raking over them from head to toe, not only fascinated by the phenomenon of how they were frozen in place like everything else, but also indulging in the urge to _look_ for as long as was wished for without consequence.

The lips of the unfrozen curled into a smile. Then, in one smooth motion, they turned and walked away down the staircase.

There was a whole castle to explore, and this time, they were going to make the most of it.

* * *

Harry didn't know how long it took him to get from the Great Hall back up to the Hospital Wing, but he was sure it was shorter than it usually would have taken. Apparently, he walked faster when he got the willies.

He slipped into the Hospital Wing – the doors were ajar, but hadn't he closed them when he left? – and went back to his assigned bed. He would have preferred to go back to bed in the Gryffindor Tower, but he didn't feel like making the journey all the way up there – he was tired enough as it was, thank you – and he felt that, since he woke up in the Hospital Wing, he should go back to sleep in the Hospital Wing. He didn't quite know why, but…there was just _something_ about the entire dream that made him think he should. It seemed right.

So he kicked off his trainers and set his wand back on the side table next to his broken glasses, ignored the medical gown and climbed back into his designated bed. He shivered again, so he reached down, grabbed the sheets from the foot of his bed, and drew them up and over himself.

He closed his eyes, but it took a long time before sleep came over him.

And when he slept, a full moon shone white light through the window.

* * *

-Nov. 9, 7:34 am-

Ron Weasley watched the Slytherin table out of the corner of his eye as he ate his breakfast.

This was not a strange occurrence, as he greatly distrusted the so-called 'darker' House of Hogwarts; he usually kept an eye on them, most days, at least as much as his attention would allow him. But today…today was different. He was watching them especially carefully today.

Because today, Malfoy had shown up for breakfast.

He'd woken up sometime yesterday, but had been restricted to the Hospital Wing the whole day, especially after he vanished in the middle of the night and wound up in the dungeons at around eight in the morning.

Based on what Hermione had shared with him at yesterday's breakfast, Malfoy vanished from the Hospital Wing just after midnight on the 8th. Around that time a kid – Creebey, or something; the excitable little firstie that kept following Harry around with a camera – on a nightly romp around the castle was Petrified. Petrified, like Mrs. Norris had been during Halloween, presumably by the exact same person and/or thing.

When it had just been Filch's cat, it hadn't been a big deal. But now whatever it was, whoever it was, had attacked a student; it was serious now. And however Ron looked at it…

…Malfoy seemed to be involved.

It could have been a coincidence that he didn't have any form of excuse for where he was when Mrs. Norris was attacked and the message on the wall was written in blood, but for him to also be mysteriously missing when the camera kid was attacked too? There was coincidence, and then there was ridiculous.

Since Harry wasn't out of the Hospital Wing yet he had to keep watch himself. It was a hard job (not yet, but it could be), but he was willing to bear it. What kind of person would he be if he didn't look out for his mates by keeping tabs on their enemies?

Sure, Harry would be better at it, but he was indisposed. Hermione would be the best choice but, well…

Ron looked over at his bushy-haired compatriot.

…she was _busy_.

Hermione, for her part, ignored the half-hearted glare that was sent her way. She kept her attention on the work in front of her. Contrary to popular belief, it was not homework. She'd finished all of that the night before, after all.

She was working on a letter to her parents.

This, as well, was not unusual. Hermione, prim and punctual as she was, sent a letter to her parents twice a month, detailing her life in the world of magic exquisitely for her non-magical parents. She'd had to fudge a few details here and there – she wasn't about to tell her worry-wart parents about how she got attacked by a _troll_, or about man-eating Cerberus, or Harry almost _dying_, or Voldemort, or people writing on the walls with blood, or the whole of a bunch of other terrifying things that had happened to her and her friends – but all in all, she was very truthful and very thorough in her description of Hogwarts. She simply edited out the death, near-death, and destruction that seemed to come with it.

In turn, her parents sent back a reply letter every time; there was less to tell, less going on in their world than in their daughter's, but their efforts were happily received every time.

The letter she was writing now was a little different than her normal five, ten page accounting.

She'd wanted to leave it to the adults, leave it to them so she could concentrate better on her own mysteries, but she found that she couldn't just leave it be; it had bugged her all last night, and she had woken up that morning with the same problem buzzing about in her skull.

The blue wave. Specifically, what it was; where it came from.

She knew that Dumbledore was undoubtedly researching it from a magical perspective, which was perfectly alright in her opinion, but she wanted to search a different venue.

The Muggle World had to have been watching it. Whatever it was, she'd felt a crackle of electricity, heard the telltale rumble of thunder trapped within it. It may have been magical in origin, she didn't know, but it was too storm-like, too _natural_ in its unnaturality to not have at least been detectable to non-magical folk. It hadn't been fast-moving, either; it had taken its sweet time pounding across the school like a god, like a tidal wave in slow-motion.

And if it wasn't quite as storm-like as she thought it was, there was definitely some form of electricity in it, which could point to some kind of massive EMP – Electromagnetic Pulse. That, while not quite as visible as the other option, would still be detected by non-magicals, especially when all of their technology started shorting out and dying.

That was what her letter was about. She had a feeling her parents would know something about it – something that wizards and witches would probably take weeks to figure out. They may have been looked down upon by the Pureblood society, but in her opinion, there were definite benefits to being able to have clear access to both the Magical and Non-magical worlds as a Muggleborn.

Hermione smiled to herself, took a bite of her toast, and continued her letter.

* * *

-8:07 am-

Auror Jenks exited Madame Bones' office, his posture stiff.

He had been released from his temporary cell, as he knew he would be, as there were no charges that were able to stick to him at the moment. However, the Ministry, acting faster than he had expected of them, were officially beginning an investigation against him, and what had actually happened at Azkaban.

As such, his wand had been turned back in, as had his Auror ID and badge. And now he was stuck with _this_–

–he glanced down at his forearm, where a temporary, Ministry-issue wand lay clasped in his holster, and he scowled with distaste–

–without any of his official authority. Director Bones was giving him paid leave for a few weeks while things were sorted out, but as it was, he was on temporary suspension.

He'd _never _been on any form of suspension – his record had been clear as a Demiguise since the bleedin' Academy, for Merlin's sake. The entire situation ate at him like acid, and even though it had only been a day-and-a-half, he was already feeling irritable; he felt liable to snap at the next person who asked him what happened, or – even worse – 'how he was doing'.

They didn't need to know what _exactly_ happened, it wasn't any of their damn business, and seeing as how he had next to zero social interactions with the _entire_ Auror Corp, there were precisely _zero_ people who were going to be honestly concerned for his well-being.

He didn't need them, anyhow. Since his wife and kid had died in the first Voldemort war, he'd embraced the 'lone wolf' persona with a passion; he didn't like help, didn't need help, and partners – such as that kid, Wilson, who'd gone and gotten his fool ass killed – only ever seemed to slow him down, only seemed to keep him from _doing his job_.

Well, one thing was for certain: Simon Ulysses Jenks wasn't going to take this investigation lying down. The breakout at Azkaban had not been his fault, and if _they, _or anyone else, were going to try and force all the blame onto him anyway, then he was going to fight back with every bit of stubborn fury that he had left.

Based on the reactions of the Dementors, plus how they managed to escape their ward-prisons, whatever happened that midnight was the same sort of thing that happened twelve hours earlier, when that blue energy wave hit. He was one of the few that had seen them both times, and he was sure that his base theory held promise. The only problem was that it was incredibly vague, and was left open to a multitude of questions: what was the blue wave? Why did it affect the Dementors like it did? Why did the same thing happen at midnight – did another form of that first wave hit, or was it something else?

All of them questions he couldn't answer himself.

Luckily, though, he had an old friend that should be able to help him out; if there was anyone that could answer the inexplicable, it was an Unspeakable.

* * *

-9:01 am-

"Take out your books, eyes to the board, and _keep your lips shut_."

Severus Snape's beetle-black eyes glittered with barely-restrained contempt as he surveyed his class from the front of the room. White lines of chalk swirled behind him on the expansive chalkboard and, line by line, twisted into the directions for the day's potion.

"While I realize that what happened on Saturday was a…" his eyes flickered to the conspicuously empty seat between Hermione and Ron "_…terrible_ tragedy…that does not mean I will allow frivolous side-conversations during my class. I do not care what happened one week ago, two days ago, or several minutes before you entered through my doors – talking is _not _necessary for the fine art of potion-brewing."

Hermione's arm shot into the air a fraction of a second before she started speaking. "But Professor, what about Incipeir Delor Venenum, which has ingredients that have to be sung to to achieve the potency needed, or the Elixir of Abarim, that can have its end result changed slightly through a variety of ancient Sumerian and Egyptian chants? And there's also-"

"–be _**quiet**_, Miss Granger," Snape said, cutting her off. "I believe I said talking _is not necessary_, and I do not believe it is any of your business to question me when I say so; and while I'm sure there is someone who is proud that you've managed to read ahead into the upper years' Potions books, none of them are _here_. Five points from Gryffindor, and I will thank you to keep your lips _shut._"

Ron muttered something under his breath, and the words "Five more, Mister Weasley, and I would keep my opinions to myself if I were you" made Hermione remember, once more, that Harry was not there to keep Ron's temper down. She quickly shifted over a stool so she was sitting right next to her red-headed friend; she placed a calming hand on his shoulder and directed her attentions back to their professor.

"The Dehydration Draught," Snape announced, his voice smooth and silky. "An amusing name, if nothing else, which describes the basic function of the potion perfectly: it removes all water from that which it comes into contact with, be it a pond, a plant, or the unfortunate person. It has had moderate popularity in the last war, as it is much more difficult to detect in a drink than other deadly potions or poisons, and as such made it successful in several assassinations before the enemy parties caught on. In more recent times, however, it has become commonly known for preserving foods for long periods of time and drying out things such as meats and fruits. As with most potions, the amount of it that is used is directly proportional to how much of something else – in this case, water – is taken. Its sister potion is called the Rehydration Draught, and reverses the effects of the other almost immediately.

"You will begin brewing this potion today, and will finish in Double Potions at the end of the week." There was a half-hearted groan from a Slytherin, but Snape silenced him with a glare. "You will be working in groups of two; those same groups will be held until the Draught's completion." He glanced at the board and his eyes quickly swept across the directions. "I expect you to be at step thirteen by the end of class today; if you are not, I can guarantee that you will not finish on time on Friday." He let his eyes linger across the students once more. "Begin."

There was a flurry of movement as they all stood and went to the back of the room to fetch their ingredients. When Hermione came back to her table, arms laden with an assortment of bottles containing shriveled plants, pieces of dead insects, various liquids, and hair, teeth, and skin of some-or-other magical animals, she quickly set out to organizing them by the order of their use.

Glancing up at the board again, she switched two of the bottles, and carefully positioned a third so it was even with the others.

She put her cauldron under the tables' spigot and tapped the faucet with her wand; it hummed for a moment, began to shake, and then water poured out. When she deemed it enough, she tapped the faucet again and the flow stopped. She put the cauldron over the burner, tapped the small metal grating three times in rapid succession, and smiled briefly when flames sprouted from within. She worried her bottom lip with her teeth before tapping the grate twice more; the tongues of flame grew a bit larger in size, and she nodded in satisfaction.

That was when she noticed that someone else was occupying the other seat at her table.

She sighed and looked at Ron. He noticed this immediately and looked back at her. "What?"

Hermione looked at Ron, then at her potion, and then finally at Neville Longbottom, one table over and looking scared and miserable without a partner.

"Could you work with Neville today?" she asked without preamble.

Ron looked confused, and glanced over at the person in question before turning back. "Why can't you do it? You're better at helping him than I am."

"Yes I am, Ron. But I was thinking of having Harry as my partner this time."

He looked at her strangely. A prolonged silence hung in the air before Ron, bewildered, said, "Hermione – Harry's still in the Hospital Wing…"

"I _know_ that, Ron," she said, her voice a little sharper than she had intended. "But I don't want to partner up with you, leave Neville all alone, and have Harry come in on Friday and get stuck with him and a failing grade that he couldn't do anything about."

"That's true…" Ron hedged.

"Ron, you know I can work better alone in Potions class than he can. Neville needs a partner."

"Well, yeah, but-" he shifted in his seat "-but I don't want a cauldron to blow up in my face," he finished in a harsh whisper.

Hermione gave him a Look. "The reason his cauldrons blow up is because he gets incredibly nervous when he's actually making the potion."

"Obviously," Ron snarked.

"So the only thing you have to do is keep him from making the potion."

"What? But that means I'm doing all the work!"

Hermione was already shaking her bushy-haired head. "Not _all_ the work. Neville can still handle all the ingredients; you've seen how great he is in Herbology, he knows how to slice and measure, combine the ingredients and everything. He's good at that."

Ron nodded his head reluctantly. "Yeah, he is good at that. So all I would have to do is throw the stuff in and stir it around a few times," he muttered thoughtfully. "I could live with that."

Hermione rolled her eyes.

"Alright," Ron said, standing up and sighing a little bit. "Hey, Neville…"

Hermione nodded in satisfaction and turned back to her potion. Seeing that the water had managed to come to a slow boil in the time of their conversation, she looked up to the board to double-check what she was to do first – only to find her view blocked by a tall, foreboding, black-clad Potions Professor.

She swallowed and looked up. Snape's thin lips were creased into a skewed facsimile of a smile. "Miss Granger," he said softly. "Looking to lose Gryffindor more points today, are we?"

"Sir?" she squeaked.

"I believe I said groups of two, Miss Granger, not groups of _one_. Are you, perhaps, taking a leaf out of," his face twisted, "Mr. _Potter's_ book, believing yourself to be higher than the rules that I set?"

Hermione's eyes flittered around nervously; the majority of the class was looking at her. Draco Malfoy, across the room, was looking positively gleeful.

_"Well?"_

She looked back up at the Potions Master, took a steadying breath, and said, "Harry – Harry's my partner, Professor."

The smile on his face, if anything, grew. He very purposefully looked at the empty seat next to her before saying, "Your _partner_ appears to be absent from class, Miss Granger. Ten points from Gryffindor."

"He's in the Hospital Wing!" Ron broke, half-shouting at the man.

Snape, in turn, glared at the redhead and snapped back with, _"Fifteen _points, Mr. Weasley, and I would advise you to _cease _your outbursts." He held the glare for several seconds before his face twitched and he slid his gaze back down to Hermione. "So Potter is still in the Hospital Wing? That must be getting _quite _worrisome." His eyes glittered with unrestrained animosity. "Meanwhile, the Slytherins that were unfortunate enough to have been caught in the incident are up, healthy – as you can see, they are already back in class, and doing quite well."

Malfoy's smile got even bigger. At the front of the class, Hermione only now noticed, busily working on the assigned potion and completely ignoring what was going on, sat Daphne Greengrass and her partner. Her long blonde hair – practically perfect, never a hair out of place – was instantly recognizable.

When had _she_ woken up?

"And I can't help but wonder," Snape continued, "if that is indicative of their ability, or Potter's distinct _lack_ of ability."

Neville, at the table beside hers, was struggling to keep Ron silent, but the redhead still managed an angry retort of "It's _indicative_ that they didn't have their skull smashed in and get dropped four hundred bloody feet!"

"Fifteen points from Gryffindor," Snape responded sharply, not even deigning to look in Ron's direction as he said it. "Continue your Draught by yourself, Miss Granger," he said, his lips still curling into a smirk. "You have fifty minutes left to complete thirteen steps. If you do not get to that point, you will have earned your partner's detention for missing class." With one last cruel smile, he turned and walked back to the front of the classroom.

Hermione watched him go with the smallest of frowns on her lips; not angry, or displeased - though she was certainly feeling both of those - but contemplative. Was the reason the Slytherins had woken first the fact that their injuries were lesser than the other five? She supposed it would have made sense, if it had been left to their own magic healing them, but Madame Pomfrey had healed all of their injuries in less than a day. If anything, they should have all woken up near-simultaneously. Unless there were some other factors that she was not aware of...

She sighed, shot a moody glare at her Professor, and went to work.

_When the water comes to a rolling boil, add one-fourth cup of crushed lacewing..._

* * *

30CK / troutpeoples

'Two months is a lot better than six.'

I've finally hit a sort of rythm with this story - this chapter took a while, but it came out a lot easier than the others, and I've been scribbling out plotlines and really just actively diving into the story here recently. I think things'll be going smoother for this (at least, for a while). Next chapter, Harry wakes up in daytime, and the British-Hogwarts Midnighters begin meeting up in midnight; also, Darklings.

Cheers! (and happy few-days-early Halloween)


	6. Chapter 6 You Can Sleep While I Dream

Chapter Six – You Can Sleep While I Dream

-Nov. 9, 11:45 am-

Hermione was feeling very left-out of something.

She had no idea what was going on, but it had been bugging her since Potions class. Despite Professor Snape's ominous pre-class warnings, nearly everyone had been whispering and muttering to each other. He ended up taking off points from Slytherin itself for a lot of the chatter (the fact that he found some ridiculous reason to renew those points a few minutes later was irrelevant), but even that did not deter everyone. She was not close enough to make out any of what anyone was saying, and thus, when Potions ended an hour later, she was still frustratingly ignorant of what exactly was so interesting. Herbology didn't get her any answers, either – they were continuing the elongated lesson on Mandrakes, and as such spent the entire period beleaguered by a pair of fuzzy earmuffs.

The same situation had appeared when they went to Lunch – everyone was clumped in tight, nervous-looking groups, whispering to each other. She had thought briefly that it had something to do with Colin Creevey being petrified – the announcement had come out yesterday – and while that had created a great deal of fear among the first years, whatever was going on now seemed to be affecting the mid-year students more than anyone else: second, third, and fourth years.

She had wanted desperately to find out _what was happening_, but she and Ron had instead chosen to eat quickly and leave so that they could spend the rest of their lunch period visiting Harry.

She had been expecting – rather morbidly, she would admit, but also _realistically_ – that Harry would be in the same position that he had been since the accident; laid out on his bed, white as the sheets that covered him, with his broken arm held stiffly at his side and his head still wrapped in bandages.

This was not the sight that greeted her when the Hospital Wing double-doors swung open; Harry was indeed in his bed, and his head still had the bandage around it, but –

"Hermione! Ron!"

Hermione couldn't help the squeak that escaped her lips, nor could she really help the fact that she was at his bed and pulling him – stupid, blundering, heroic, one-minded, noble, _very much awake and healthy_ Harry Potter – into a Granger-worthy hug in the blink of an eye. Harry squawked and tensed just slightly, but the hug was returned a second later. When Hermione pulled back, they were both smiling.

"Took you long enough to get your lazy arse up, Potter," Ron said as he came over to the bed. Harry grinned at him.

"Turns out getting the shite knocked out of you gets you a couple of free all-day lie-ins. You should try it. Besides, I think I might've gotten a good ten centimeters or so taller with all of that sleep."

Ron snorted and came back with, "You need it."

"Hey!"

"Ron," Hermione said, giving him a half-hearted glare. The red-head just smirked back at her, and she turned back to Harry. "How are you feeling?"

"Surprisingly well. Head still hurts and my arm feels…tight, I guess, but Madame Pomfrey has assured me that they'll fade in another day or two."

"Are you cleared to leave?" she asked.

Here, Harry ducked his head, embarrassed, it seemed. "No, not yet. Madame Pomfrey wants me to stay at least one more day."

"Then why are you in your school clothes?" Ron spoke up, looking confused. Harry had been in the issued patient gown the previous visits, but this time, not. Instead, he was sitting on the Hospital Wing mattress in a very wrinkled pair of trousers and an equally-rumpled jumper, both part of the school uniform and very much not the standard aforementioned medical gown.

Harry looked down at himself and frowned; something flickered across his face for a brief moment – confusion? caution? concern? – before he looked back up and smiled again. "I was all ready to leave when I woke up this morning, and I thought Pomfrey was going to go for it." He shrugged. "Guess not. But she hasn't made me change back yet," he added.

Hermione frowned slightly at her friend's response, but she nodded all the same and put it out of her mind. She took a seat on a nearby stool, placed her book bag on the floor and after unzippering it began to dig around. "In any case," she said, voice even, "she hasn't 'gone for it' yet, and until she does, you're still stuck here with nothing to do."

"It's not _nothing-_"

Hermione emerged from the bag and slapped a considerable stack of parchment onto the floor next to her. It effectively silenced whatever weak argument Harry was attempting to reply with. "You need to catch up on the classes you're missing, Harry, otherwise you'll be lost when you come back in." She returned to the bag.

"Come off it, Hermione, he's been conked-out for a few days, not _months_ – with three classes a day at _most_, it's not like he won't have plenty of time to make it all up," Ron said.

"Time which he has plenty of right – _now_," she replied seriously, extracting another hefty collection of papers and setting it beside the first.

"Just because a bloke's got _time_ to do all his homework doesn't mean he's gonna _want _to – Harry, back me up."

Harry felt a little grin quirk at his lips at his friends' interaction, and he shrugged. "I really should. Snape especially is gonna give me hell if I'm not an expert on whatever we're doing-"

"-Dehydration Draught," Hermione piped up.

"-by next class," he finished. "And besides, what else do I actually have to do?"

Hermione beamed. Ron blew a raspberry and held his hands up in surrender. "So when'd you wake up, then?" he asked, turning to Harry curiously.

"Just a few hours ago, actually. Madame Pomfrey was pretty happy about that, but she got kinda miffed when she tested me four ways 'til Sunday and came up with nothing."

"She wasn't able to figure _anything _out?" Hermione asked next to her two sizeable stacks of parchment – with another growing steadily as she pulled more out of her bag.

Harry shrugged. "Not a clue. She told me that Malfoy woke up sometime really early yesterday and left the Hospital Wing-"

"-yeah," Ron put in, "he wound up in Snape's office during breakfast; I guess he and Snape were talking about something for a while, because it wasn't until his first Potions class started that the greasy git escorted Malfoy back up here. I heard one of the first years saying that he was gone for the nearly the first half-hour of class."

"Probably the best Potions class they've had yet," Harry muttered. In a normal tone of voice he continued, "She ended up keeping him for the rest of the day. Daphne Greengrass woke up later in the afternoon, and Pomfrey had her stay the rest of the day too. She tried everything she could think of on the both of them, but she hasn't been able to figure a thing out. Don't let her hear you, but I think she's going 'round the bend about this whole thing," he confided with a grin.

Ron chuckled, but Hermione looked at him reprovingly. "That's not funny, Harry," she scolded as she transferred the three stacks of parchment onto the small table by his bed. "She's worried about what happened to you – all of you – and it's not right to make fun of someone, even lightly, for caring."

"Yeah, I know," Harry said grudgingly. Then – "You read the Prophet now, Hermione?"

"Sometimes," she admitted as she began stuffing her belongings back into her bag. "Why?"

"Probably 'cause you've got yesterday's and today's issue laying out on the floor."

Hermione shot Ron a weak glare and looked at the floor; and, indeed, two issues of the Daily Prophet – November 8, 1992, and November 9, 1992 – were on the floor next to the rest of the contents of her schoolbag. She frowned, and something clicked into place in her mind.

The whispering, hushed conversations, and fear had only begun towards the end of breakfast that morning – after Owl Post had come and gone. After the Daily Prophets and The Quibblers and the Wizarding Britain Posts had been delivered and had begun being read.

She stowed yesterday's issue back into her bag and picked up the 9th's, sitting back properly in her seat. She shuffled the paper back into order and looked at the front page, and she gasped.

_Well_ _– that certainly explained the fear._

She shakily turned the paper around to her expectant friends, allowing them to see the headline news.

_**ESCAPE FROM AZKABAN!**_

Ron, for his part, was appropriately shocked. Harry, however…

"What's Azkaban?"

"Big bad wizard prison," Ron answered shortly. "How the bloody hell did someone _escape?"_

Hermione didn't even chastise him for swearing. She was quickly flipping through the rest of the paper and paled further. "Not 'someone', Ron…" She swallowed. "_**Someones.**_"

"_What?"_

The ginger attempted to grab the paper, but Hermione jerked it out of his reach and read another headline aloud: "_'The Inescapable Fortress – Beaten'" _and then another_ "'Inner Circle Death Eaters, Out'" _and another "_'Six of You-Know-Who's Closest Followers Run Free'"._

"Six?" Harry repeated, his voice low – he might have been ignorant of the situation at hand, but the seriousness of it was obvious. Hermione just nodded.

"That – _that's impossible_," Ron managed, his face paradoxically alternating between bloodless white and flushed red as his emotions warred. "You don't just – you can't just _escape_ from Azkaban! There're all sorts of enchantments set around the tower, not to mention the Dementors-"

"-the Dementors were all under lock and key, Ron-"

"-and were replaced by about 50 of the Ministry's best Aurors, you told me that from yesterday's paper, Hermione!"

"If there's anyone who can escape a prison, it's half a dozen of the worst criminals-"

"-that's a load of _bollocks_, Hermione, that place's been spelled and warded so many times _specifically _to keep that lot _in-_"

"-and yet they still got _out_, Ron-"

"_It's on an island in the middle of the bloody sea, _Hermione, where're they gonna – where _did they _go?"

"We don't very well know that, but _it happened,_ Ron, and don't try to deny that."

"Hey!" Harry spoke up, cutting Ron off before he could retort just as harshly. "Settle down. _Both of you_," he added warningly, seeing Hermione, too, puff up with indignation. "Now, what exactly is a Dementor – and could I get a better description of this supposedly-impenetrable place beside 'big bad wizard prison'?"

Hermione sighed deeply and handed the Prophet over to Ron; he could peruse its contents while she dropped knowledge on the uninformed. Then, gathering herself up in what was semi-affectionately called her 'lecture mode', she began. She'd only first heard of Azkaban the previous day, after it was mentioned in the paper, but in between her slight case of hysteria over the comatose Harry, the rest of her schoolwork, and the plagues of questions that the Blue Wave had brought up, she'd looked up Azkaban in the Library.

Azkaban, she'd found out and as she explained to Harry, was widely regarded as the worst prison in the entire wizarding world. It had been harshly criticized by outside nations for being cruel and barbaric and downright evil; it was such criticisms that came from places like Russia, Kenya, Brazil, the States – places known, places _famous_ for having some of the most notorious prisons in the world in their cultures' pasts and presents, Magic and Muggle alike – that went so far into displaying just how horrific Azkaban truly was. In fact, the only group of people that seemed to be willing to tolerate its continued existence was the very people that lorded over it – Magical Britain.

Azkaban had been built sometime in the 10th century, and had remained virtually unchanged since its conception. There were no exact blueprints of Azkaban, but it was widely known that it had five levels: three aboveground, two beneath. The sub-levels housed the lesser criminals – underage murderers, accessories to murder, etc, etc – and they were more or less protected from the effects of the Dementors, who stayed aboveground (for the most part). But with each level up, there were less and less protective wards, less countermeasures against them, and at Level 3 – home to the cold-blooded killers who slaughtered multiple people, the genocidal maniacs, the insane scum and the absolute Worst of the Worst – there were virtually none. They received the full brunt of a Dementor's chilling effects, and would continue under it until they died in their cells.

She tried comparing a Dementor to the Nazgul of Tolkien, hoping that as a fellow muggle-raised Magical he'd get the reference, but she was sadly disappointed when Harry just looked at her blankly.

It was halfway through her dumbed-down explanation of the detestable wraiths that Ron spoke up.

"Um, Harry?" He couldn't have sounded more awkward or nervous if he'd tried.

"Yeah?"

There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Ron refused to meet anyone's eyes, keeping his own locked onto the paper in his lap. "D'you…I mean…" He cleared his throat and shuffled awkwardly. "Have – have you ever -"

"Oh, spit it _out_, Ronald," Hermione snapped at him, slightly irked at the unintelligible interruption.

Ron stood very, very still and asked, "Does the name Sirius Black mean anything to you?"

Harry furrowed his brow as he thought; when he came up with nothing, he looked at Ron and shook his head. "No. Should it?"

After another long pause, Ron very reluctantly handed the paper over to his friend.

* * *

-3:48 pm-

"-and you'd think that all was lost – you would, wouldn't you Mr. Finnegan? Yes, of course you would; a more hopeless situation could hardly be imagined, I should think – so you'd think all was lost at that point – _but!"_ The word was punctuated with a very firmly upheld index finger. "But you would be _wrong!_ Sure, I may have been wandless, bruised, trussed up, starved, and without my specialty brand of hair-care products, but I was _far_ from beaten! You see, earlier that day, I had given a few galleons to some poor Muggle chap in exchange for a few of his little stick matches – the ones that make fire if you strike them just so? – because I had this terrible sense that I might need them. And lo and behold, need them I did! I maneuvered one of my bound hands into my trouser pocket and took out a stick match, and as there was no rough surface in reach, I was forced to strike the stick match on the only thing I could get to – my own flesh!" At this, a thin, dainty-looking wrist was held up in the air, and a small unidentifiable mark was revealed on the otherwise-unblemished surface – supposedly where the life-saving stick matches had been struck. "Yes, it took sixteen tries and three other stick matches, but I had created fire! And as you should know from reading my books, the Yeti, or _Abominalis Snowamanus, _detests fire of any size or shape …"

Normally, one of Lockhart's ridiculous anecdotes would be heard with rapt attention; normally, the very sound of his voice would have the females in the classroom staring and drooling; normally, several of the males in the classroom would be coming up with new and daring ways to commit suicide, because Lockhart _was_ really that bad.

But not today. Death Eaters had escaped from Azkaban. Murderers were running free. They had no time to listen to Lockhart spout his fairy tales of heroics today. Not when there was a very evil, very _real_ threat hiding in the shadows now, far worse than some unknown thing Petrifying something once every few months.

Few people knew of this threat like Neville Longbottom did. After all…

His hands curled tight on his desk, fisted until his knuckles turned white.

…Bellatrix Lestrange was one of the escapees.

He swallowed thickly and kept his tears at bay.

Bellatrix Lestrange. Sirius Black. Augustus Rookwood. Antonin Dolohov. Walden Macnair. Bracken Yaxley.

Some of You-Know-Who's closest followers. His most loyal. His most dangerous. His most deadly.

They'd escaped. The first recorded breakout from Azkaban in _history_, and it had to be six of the worst psycho-killers this side of the Atlantic. They'd broken out of their cells close to midnight, had killed over fifteen of the Auror guards, relieving them all of their wands as they went, and then they were just…gone. No fuss, no big battles, it was as if they'd all just strolled out the front door and walked away across the water.

It was nerve-wrecking; it was terrifying. These were people who completely ruined the lives of the Longbottoms, the Potters, the Bones, and so many others, who had done unspeakable things to people numbering in the hundreds, who by every right should have been given the death penalty the very _moment_ they were captured – who were now walking free.

He wondered if anyone else was as terrified as he was; probably not. Everyone else was so much braver than him: Harry Potter. The Weasleys. Susan Bones – she wasn't even a Gryffindor, but being raised by her aunt had given her the grit and tenacity of one very stubborn and fearless woman. Far more than even Neville could claim; he was just a crybaby…like Malfoy had said last year, he was just a big fat crybaby. A crybaby who nearly wet himself at the very idea of Death Eaters, who wasn't brave like the others, who couldn't deal with something this enormous all on his own – because he _was_ all on his own…

Neville swallowed, forced emerging tears back, and laid his head down onto his desk, ignoring the continued prattle of Lockhart (who had, apparently, managed to set the Yeti completely on fire, because it had apparently taken a liking to his specialty brand of hair-care products which, like so many other hair-care products, were flammable. And _that, _ladies and gentlemen, was how he had taken out the first [of many] Yeti!). He let out a shuddering breath, and told himself that whatever he was feeling, he was not going to cry.

_He wouldn't cry…_

* * *

-7:55 pm-

_Stampede,_

_I find myself forced to admit that I do not have any influence or capacity in the area of which you are alluding to; rest assured, though, the matter is being researched heavily by quite a few of our Best and Brightest. I am unable to provide you with any information that you would find useful, and it is thusly that I extend my sincere apologies. However, there is little reason for you to fall into despair, for my colleagues are hardly the only ones to be researching the phenomenon that has your interest so piqued. If you want answers, I recommend that you try for a more __**British**__ education, you bleeding uncultured Yank._

_P.S. this does not bode well._

With an absentminded wave of his hand, Auror-on-suspension Simon Ulysses Jenks dismissed the small, eager owl that had delivered his post. He tapped his finger upon his leg as he thought.

The letter, though short, was most definitely the response he had been looking for. He hadn't expected to receive it in such a short period of time – he had, after all, only sent his preceding letter earlier that day, and his contact was a busy man – and was therefore pleasantly surprised that it had been so.

The Department of Mysteries, as expected, was looking into the Blue Wave; unfortunately, his contact was not involved in the research and thus could prove no further use. However, the man redeemed himself in the last bit of the letter, freely revealing that the Department was not the only organization / people that were pursuing their curiosities upon what had happened.

The Department of Mysteries, as a rule, was a very isolated structure. They dealt with magic – all kinds of magic, old, new, lost and forgotten – but _only_ magic. As such they were ignorant of a great many things, things Natural or things Muggle, and it was for this reason that the Unspeakables, as knowledgeable as they were, could not be counted on to think of everything.

His contact was acknowledging this, and allowing Jenks a new avenue to pursue: a 'British education'.

A school.

Hogwarts.

Because if there was _anyone_ who_ needed to know_ what had happened, it was Albus Dumbledore. He had his fingers in more pies than he had digits, and his knowledge was rivaled by only a handful of people in the entire country, possibly the world. The old man just couldn't stand _not knowing_ – it was one of his most well-known compulsions, right up there with his bizarre Muggle candy fixation. So if there was one place Jenks needed to go, it was where Albus Dumbledore resided. And thus…

With a wave of his Ministry-issued wand, the letter burst into flame.

…he needed to get going.

* * *

-time unknown-

It was several hours later that Harry, sleeping soundly in the Hospital Wing bed, was suddenly and inexplicably jerked awake. On instinct his eyes were flicking around the room, looking for anything out of the ordinary, anything suspicious or otherwise odd that could have possibly aided in the sudden transition from the sleeping world to the waking one, and his arms came in close to his chest protectively.

He didn't know what it was, but something was _off_. Usually, this went hand-in-hand with Dudley sneaking into his room to rough him up in the middle of the night, or his dormmates snoring a few decibels too loud, or Hedwig tapping on the window for entrance from a late-night flight. Whatever it was, it was something that wasn't in the norm for his typical sleep cycle, and he was on guard because of it.

But when nothing made itself known, when the only thing his eyes met with was perfect stillness, he slowly began to relax. His limbs unfurled and with a long sigh, he set his face into his hands.

And that was when it hit him:

Nothing was moving.

_Nothing_ was moving.

He slowly raised his head, letting his hands drop into his lap, and he took another careful look around the Wing. There were no snores. There was no tossing and turning, no rustling of sheets. There was no crackle of torch, or whisper of wind. The curtains remained still despite the wide-open window. The flames on the bracket-held torches were frozen in place. The resident of each bed was as unmoving as so many mannequins.

And it was all bathed in luminescent blue.

For almost a full minute, Harry stared blankly at the non-world around him; his mouth was suspiciously dry, his mind worryingly empty. When he finally roused himself from the stupor, he couldn't quite figure out if he was excited or terrified by what appeared to be going on…because he was either experiencing the same sort of dream as he had the previous night, which could be anywhere from 'kinda creepy' to 'completely wicked'…or _he wasn't dreaming_.

In which case he had every right to be terrified.

He was still clad in his school clothes, the same ones he'd worn the entire day, the same ones he'd gone to sleep in, so when he pushed the sheets off of his body and slid to the floor, the only thing he had to put on were his trainers. Fully dressed, he looked around once more and noticed that, exactly like the night before, he could see perfectly without his glasses.

Only…

He looked back down at his hands. He'd just woken up, so he didn't think it strange – some grime still in his eye or something – but his hands were…blurry? Almost like he was looking at them without his glasses in normal-time.

He looked down at the aforementioned pair of glasses; they lay on his bedside table next to his wand, clean, whole, and completely repaired. Hermione had put them back to normal with a few practiced flicks of her wand that afternoon…

That afternoon, he'd learned of Dementors. He'd learned of Azkaban, and of Death Eaters.

He'd learned of Sirius Black.

Harry left the Hospital Wing, the anxiety and prickling fear ebbing back as his mind descended into turmoil.

Sirius Black hailed from the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, a line as Dark as their name. Black, in his earlier years, had appeared to be the odd one out, being sorted into Gryffindor instead of the ritualistic Slytherin and generally disliking everything that was even remotely related to the Dark Arts. He was quite the charmer and prankster during his schooling, and was best friends with one James Potter. That friendship, however, seemed to have been for naught, as just a few years after their graduation from Hogwarts, when James Potter had married one Lily Evans and borne a child, Black sold them out to Voldemort.

The reason _why_ was never investigated, never questioned; but the thing was that he had done it. And as if hadn't been enough, directly after Lily and James had been killed and Harry had beaten the Dark Lord Voldemort, Black then attempted to hunt down another one of his friends by the name of Peter Pettigrew. He succeeded. And then, _further_, he blew up a street full of Muggles, killing thirteen and injuring nearly twenty others.

He'd been laughing as the Aurors dragged him away.

And then he'd been locked away. Over ten years – almost a full one-third of his lifetime – he'd spent behind bars with only the Dementors as company.

But now he was out. Free.

Harry stumbled and almost fell down the stairwell.

He was scared, more scared than he'd ever been; when he'd faced down Quirrel-Voldemort the previous year, which _had been _the most terrifying thing in his young life, he'd at least _known_ what he'd been facing; the threat, the object of terror, had been right in front of him. But here…he had no idea what Black would do; he could leave, run away, and Harry could never see the man in his life…or he could come after Harry and finish what he'd started, and Harry would never know that he was coming.

* * *

They walked calmly up the immobilized stairways, their ice-blue eyes closed in a facsimile of peace, their pale hand trailing ever-so-gently across the rough stone walls.

They were almost close to what a normal person might call 'happy', had, of course, such emotional capacity been possible for them; the most they managed to reach on any given day was a skewed form of contentment. The reason for this almost-emotion was that tonight, they weren't going to follow the Boy-Who-Lived; they were going to meet him.

This had been a long time coming. Even before the Blue Wave had swept over Hogwarts, before the Hospital Wing, before they began Seeing things, a meeting with Harry Potter had always been something necessary to achieve, a need that could only become more insistent as they grew older.

Tonight…

They were not aware of where exactly he was inside the castle; they were not particularly concerned with this gap in their knowledge, because they did not need to find him; he would come to them, and they would see him, meet him, before this blue night ceased to be. They had Seen the interaction, Seen him and his voice and the Room they were to meet in, Seen it a long time before the night's Midnight came, Seen-

_-through the darkness, a form strapped to a table; a girl who should have been crying and screaming but only stared blankly at the ceiling, and in a swirl of color opened her mouth and said in a voice that was not her own,_

"_**Don't**__ touch me, Potter, I neither want nor __**need**__ your heroic assistance", the spots of pink dusting her cheeks illustrating her unnaturally-emotional state; he stepped forward, to do what he wasn't certain, but before he could figure it out-_

_-there were __four men, having been caught unprepared by the sudden beginning of that which was stopped, having been swept away by unmerciful waters, and having their wands, unjustly taken as they were, grabbed away by the chilling sea; they held to each other with what little strength they had left, looking and hoping in desperation for something, anything to save their lives, and the waters churned and the darkness overtook them-_

_-and in a room far away from what he'd once considered a home, he and those who had joined him sat around a table; he sighed deeply, weary and tired, but his voice was strong and unyielding as he looked at those before him and said, "We're going to need some outside help." And he shook his head and cursed mildly and said_

"_For I walk once again, and neither time nor darkness is able to stop my steps forward." The shadows in the corners of the room extended and enveloped its occupants, and-_

_-among the trees, Draco Malfoy stood all alone in front of the abyss; he spoke, but words were not what left his lips and words were not what-_

_-are we doing here, then?" Her face moved, and he thought she may have been smiling – and she looked out a window that he had not noticed was there before – and he thought that perhaps she seemed content as blue and un-light and shadows bathed her face – and she replied, "We're waiting for the end."_

- flashes and images, splintered from events that had not yet happened, that would invade their mind without care, concern, or mercy. No time, no warning.

Their face twitched, and a crease appeared upon their forehead.

The only unknown that remained of their fated interaction was the time, but such a detail was as of now unimportant. As it was, there was no doubt that they would meet, be it four minutes from present or forty; if things had changed, they would have Seen something different to account for the skewing of the present.

They may have only had such Sight for the last few days, but it, their interpretations given, and the conclusions drawn from it had yet to be wrong.

So, satisfied in their certainty, they continued up the frozen stairways at their own leisure and very softly began to hum.

* * *

Harry, for his part, had once again ended up at the enormous double doors of the Entrance Hall.

He put his hand to the magicked wood and shuddered; behind the doors, vast and unknown, lay the outside. He felt confident in saying that even in this Blue Time the interior of Hogwarts held no danger to him. The outside, though…he didn't know what it was, what those splotches of out-of-focus were, _what was out there_. And the forest…

The Forbidden Forest had been nagging at his mind all day. He'd known since the previous year that some really nasty things lived there – after running into Voldemort's wraith and angry centaurs and car-crushing trees, that fact was pretty well-cemented into his mind – but he'd never truly _feared_ the place. But now…now he couldn't help the feeling of dread that crept up over him at the thought of it. He'd spent most of the morning – after Madame Pomfrey had been [dis]satisfied and before Hermione and Ron came to visit – by the window, just staring outside, and whenever his gaze lingered on the vastness of the Forbidden Forest, a chill had cut down his spine.

There was just an awful _offness_ about the Forest. And while it settled ill in his bones, he couldn't help the stubborn, hard-headed curiosity that rose up in challenge. As much as he wanted to stay away, far far _far _away, he also wanted to barge straight in and find out for himself what in seven bloody hells was making him feel so scared. Then get rid of it.

_Apparently_, he thought as his body pressed hard against one of the entrance doors, he was going to go with the latter option. _Damn him _for being a Gryffindor, because he was really starting to see what Hermione meant when she lectured him on his run-in-headfirst thing.

The blue light from the not-moon washed over him as he stepped out onto the cobbled path, glancing brightly off of the bits of metal clasps that dotted his clothes. His eyes flicked around – the lake, smooth as glass, black as obsidian, Hagrid's hut off in the distance, still and unmoving, the Whomping Willow even further off, limbs frozen in time – before settling upon the expanse of the Forbidden Forest.

His mouth turned dry.

The Forest, much like last time, was blurred, out of focus, like a heat haze had passed over it and stubbornly settled down to stay. And with it had come that distinct _wrongness_. It made Harry feel sick just looking at it.

He drew his wand from his trouser pocket. The weight and the feel of his holly-wood wand brought him more comfort and confidence than he thought was possible; it tempered the fear, soothed his unease. Something to do with the phoenix-feather core, perhaps. In any case, Harry swallowed thickly, stood up straight, and walked down the cobbled path. Away from the protective embrace of the castle. Towards the unknown terror of the Forest.

He passed by several of the out-of-focus spots, and he couldn't help the shiver that crept up over him when he realized that the blurs – each and every one of them – led a trail of unfocus straight back into the Forbidden Forest, like the tentacles of some unspeakable, nigh-invisible monster; almost as if there was _something_ that actually created the blurs as they roamed about, something that inhabited the Forest, and something that came out at night to prowl about the frozen grounds of Hogwarts.

A few days ago, before he'd been pummeled by a rouge Bludger, he would have easily dismissed the thought as fearful paranoia. Now, however – now he was only too willing to believe it.

The grip on his wand tightened.

One tense minute later, he was standing at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. He looked right and he looked left, and he noticed how strangely straight and even the edge of the Forest actually was; it was as if the trees had run into an invisible wall at the edge of the Hogwarts property, and weren't allowed to grow out anymore. Spells, maybe? Could a Headmaster have magicked a sort of unseen barrier around the school to keep the Forest from overrunning it?

He shook his head and dislodged the idle thoughts; he took one deep, reassuring breath, and he stepped into the arms of the Forest.

He had been expecting it to grow progressively darker as he went deeper into the Forest, as the trees grew closer and the branches intertwined and the leaves blocked out the blue moon, but the deeper he delved the more he realized that this was not the case; in fact, everything seemed just as bright and glowing blue as it had outside on the main grounds, exposed to the not-moon.

And he realized that it wasn't the not-moon that produced blue light from its sun-spot self, but rather that everything _was_ the blue color; as if the not-moon itself removed all other color from the world around him, leeching away all signs of life and movement and leaving behind the dark, cold, unfeeling blue.

As he stepped through the half-dead grass and the foreboding forms of the trees, Harry couldn't stop the recurring chill that crept down his spine, nor could he stop that faint, rational part of his mind from yelling about how what he was doing was incredibly stupid and lacking in any form of common sense. As he had been doing for the last un-timed ten minutes or so, he steadfastly ignored that logical bit and continued to stubbornly tromp through the Forest in stereotypical Gryffindor fashion.

Or, at least, he _did_ do so – that is, until he heard something.

Harry had learned something fairly basic in the limited amount of time he'd spent in these frozen-blue-times, and it was as such: when everything around you is frozen in time, you are essentially the only one around capable of making any sort of noise whatsoever. Thus, as a corollary, if you hear something [a noise _not_ created by your own movements] when everything around you is frozen in time, then clearly you are _not_ the only one around capable of making any sort of noise whatsoever, and are not the only thing that has remained unfrozen in time.

So when he heard a noise emanate from within the trees around him, his wand was up and in front of him immediately, and his eyes were narrowed and staring hard into the blurred forest; because even if he couldn't see very well in this godforsaken Forest, he'd still be able to notice something moving in a world of stillness.

Not that he wanted to see anything moving, though. After all, while he did have some idea of what monsters lurked in the Forbidden Forest at daytime – and those were plenty bad enough, thank you very much – he had no idea what sorts of nasties could come crawling out in this blue nighttime, and he had no inclination to find out.

Then he heard the noise again and, resigned and terrified at the same time, he turned towards it; he was able to identify it this time as a growl. He wasn't much of an animal person, so he couldn't tell what sort of creature could have been growling at him in the first place, but he could tell about all he needed: the growl was deep, and it was powerful – like thunder – and it was very, very threatening. The growl alone caused all the stubborn tenacity that had gotten him into the Forest to promptly flee in terror, and the sight of it was not much better.

One moment, there was nothing but trees; and the next, without a sound, it was there. An unidentifiable mass of bulk and shadow, twice Harry's size and, even in its anonymity, fifty times as scary. Two slitted purple eyes and several rows of wicked-looking teeth were the only things that gave it some form of identity, as they were the only things that stood out against the blurred bulk of its body.

Fear began to pour into Harry's system in earnest, freezing him in place as its eyes locked onto him, and as it slowly began to move. It made its way through the multitude of trees between them with careful, quiet steps; four legs were revealed as it moved, tipped with several razor-sharp claws; and it moved fluidly, shifting around the trees with ease, keeping its eyes trained upon the young wizard the entire time, and closing the distance between wizard and animal with almost shocking speed.

Finally, when it was almost upon him, energy – the need to _do something_ about what was about to happen – surged through him, and his wand snapped back up and trained upon the animal, and with every bit of magical intent he could feel, shouted "Incendio!" and –

- and…and nothing happened.

There was no light that sprung from his wand and exploded in the creature's face.

No flames issued and lit the animal up like a kebob.

There was no spell.

There was no magic.

Harry stood there, deep in the Forbidden Forest, head-to-head with a monster of unknown origins, strengths, or temperament, and the one thing he'd been counting on for his safety and well-being, the one thing that he had been _sure_ wasn't about to vanish inexplicably or alter all of a sudden due to this frozen blue time – _his magic_ – had simply and utterly failed him.

The out-of-focus monster growled again, and it rattled every bone in his body. Fear began trickling into him once again, and he took a step back, away from the animal, and swish-and-flick-ed his wand at a nearby log – his magic couldn't be _not working_, it wasn't possible, he just needed to try again and it'd be okay; he'd levitate the fallen tree and bash the monster over the head, like Ron had done last year to that troll – but the log didn't move.

His magic did not work. Not here. Not in this world.

Not when time was stopped.

Fear, panic – raced through his body – utter terror fell over him – _he couldn't beat this thing without his magic!_ –

Harry turned and fled.

* * *

Two pairs of eyes opened.

In unison, the owners of said eyes sat up, rubbed their faces vigorously, and looked around.

"I say…"

"This is _decidedly_ odd."

"But very interesting."

"Like what I thought gettin' caned was like."

"Mmm. Lucy in the sky and all that."

"Quite so – although, how sure are we that we're not simply dreaming this?"

"Good point. We have had tandem dreams in the past, so even with the confusing setting that has been presented-"

"-it's still very possible that a dream is only a dream."

"Can't think of a reason why we'd dream something like this, though."

"Not without some fun influence beforehand, at least."

"Precisely. But I haven't done any such thing, least not to my knowledge."

"Nor I."

"Hmm."

"Hmm indeed."

"I say – look over there."

"Well, she does look familiar, now, doesn't she?"

"One of Ginny's friends, yeah?"

"Don't live any more than five or so kilometers away from us."

"Just over the hill, yeah. Lovebird?"

"Oh, don't speak nonsense. It was Love_good_, if I remember correctly."

"You usually do."

"Glad you agree."

"Why do you think she's here?"

"Not a clue. Unless this _is _a dream and you had some sort of pseudo-pedophilic crush on her when you were going about forgetting her name?"

"That doesn't sound like me at all."

"Agreed. Ridiculous."

"…so?"

"So. Not a dream?"

"Don't think so."

"Definitely not."

* * *

His heart pounded in his ears as he ran, his breath coming out in sharp gasps, his legs and arms a blur of motion as he pumped them to and fro. His wand – his absolutely _useless_ wand! – was still clenched in his hand in a white-knuckled grip, and had come close to jabbing him in the eye as he ran.

Frozen branches stretched across his path, reaching at him like claws, scratching and tearing at the exposed skin of his face and arms as he fled. He didn't much care, or rather, he couldn't afford to care – a few scrapes and cuts were nothing compared to what that animal could do, what it was _going_ to do to him if, or more probably, _when_, it caught him.

For its part, the Animal was like a ghost in the shadows. Swift, silent, unseen, it kept up with Harry easily, moving like liquid through the darkness, _with _the darkness, around trees and holes and over the brush and leaves. Its too-intelligent violet eyes never wavered from him – he could _feel _its gaze locked upon him – and its teeth, gleaming in the not-moon and as sharp and wicked-looking as knives, were bared in anticipation.

Harry ran, and the Animal chased. Harry ran, and the Animal _hunted._

And finally, after what seemed like forever, the trees began to clear. A surge of hope, of success and adrenaline, surged through his body and he bolted forward with new energy – if he could just get out, he'd be free, he'd be okay, if he could just get out of the Forest _if he could –_ he burst out of the last line of trees into the clear green plains of the Hogwarts grounds, and in his haste and excitement and success he misstepped, tripped, and tumbled.

He hit the ground hard. His lungs emptied and his right arm flared with pain; his wand fell from his grip.

He lay there, facedown in the grass, arm awkwardly pinned beneath his stomach, and he probably would have stayed there for a good deal longer had his mind not remembered one very important thing, a passing thought that had slipped into his mind before his little expedition.

The out-of-focus spots, the out-of-focus lines, the areas blurred that littered the Hogwarts grounds all led back to the Forbidden Forest; as if there was _something_ that created the blurs, leaving behind a trail of unfocus as they roamed about; as if things that inhabited the Forest chose to come out at night, coming out and marring the clarity with their very presence.

_They could come out._

Harry lunged to the side, grabbing at his wand where it lay, just as the Animal's enormous clawed foot crashed down where he himself had lain. His feet were underneath him and he was running again before he could adequately keep track of what was happening – relying on instinct was all that was left, was the only thing that he could depend on in this mad situation – and the air behind him shifted as the Animal lashed out at him with its other razor-tipped paw, catching the very hem of his jumper and shredding it, making Harry jerk to the right, stumble, almost fall again – but he kept running.

He kept running.

Behind him, out in the open now, the Animal wasn't the shadow-being that it had been in the Forest; where in the cover of the trees it was swift and silent as a ghost, out in the open it was somehow the exact opposite. It had blended in with the darkness in the Forest, but outside its black coloring only made it a very easy and unmistakable target; its steps, swift and sure, had not made a sound among the trees, leaves, and dried branches of the Forest, but in the open its footfalls were heavy upon the ground; it had not made a sound in the Forest since that original snarl, but in the public grounds, it snarled and spat with fervor, almost in anger.

It was in a fury, and it was still gaining after him, and the only thing that had kept Harry alive even this far was his speed, his endurance, his reflexes, and for quite possibly the first time in his admittedly-short life, he gave thanks to his relatives' harsh treatment of him, because if he'd been loved and pampered as much as his cousin, he would have been dead already.

And he kept running.

The door to the Entrance Hall was still open, and as his feet transitioned from short-cut grass to cobbled pathway, his heart pounded loud in his chest; his breath came out in loud gasps; his ill-fitting trainers clapped loudly against the stone. Even more loudly behind him, the Animal bounded after him, its own footfalls heavy against the stone.

There was a sound like thunder behind him – Harry only barely recognized it as a roar – and he heard the footfalls cease.

He made it to the doors, not slowing down by a second, and without hesitation leapt through the opening; and almost as soon as he passed the threshold of the Great Hall, an explosion of wooden chunks and slivers followed him, chips and splinters tumbling through the air as he did, flying from several long, thick, _deep_ gouges in the heavy, wooden double-doors.

And when he had crossed halfway through the Great Hall in a few lengthy strides, Harry slowed, just a little, and glanced back, because surely the Animal wouldn't be able to come any further, not with the castle's enchantments, not with the castle's wards and protections in place, strong and powerful as they were.

But he was once again reminded that magic of _all _kinds did not seem to work in this Blue Time, for the sight that greeted him was not a good one; a sight of the Animal shifting, squirming, forcing its considerable bulk through the stubbornly-unmoving doors, its claws raking and screeching as it tried to find purchase against the stone and wood, tried to enter the Castle; and as its enraged violet eyes stared furiously into his own, Harry knew that it would only be a few seconds more before it succeeded.

He was tired of running; tired of fearing; he wanted to stand, stay, and fight. He wanted to beat this thing, drive it away – but all of these things he could not do. He had no magic, he had no weapon, he had no strength in numbers nor in power; the only thing he could do, as of now, was be as far away from it as possible.

So, shame and anger burning in his chest and obscenities he'd only ever heard from Vernon spitting from his lips like molten flame, Harry kept running.

He ran from the Great Hall and as he reached the next set of enormous double-doors, leading to the staircases and luckily already-open, the sound of a great deal of wooden door being demolished reached his ears. And as he ascended the staircase, when he had reached the next floor up, he heard it again, and the rhythmic pounding of heavy footfalls began anew on the stairs below him.

The sound awoke terror in him anew, and with a cry he began to throw things – something, _anything_ that he passed – behind him as he ran: abandoned books ranging from worn and ragged to brand-new, prank items frozen in the middle of their purpose, the battered, hardly-together remains of the old suits of armor that lined each floor, a pair of shoes; and when those became less he turned to the classic torches that lined the walls, plucking them from their brackets and flinging them behind him.

Unfortunately, although rightly so, in his panic he wasn't able to or about to chance a look behind him to see the effect the objects had, strewn as they became in the path of the Animal. For if he had, he would have seen this:

He would have seen the Animal, large and hulking and catlike in appearance, spit and snarl as books, collections of words and numbers, bounced down the stairs or flew by. He would have seen the Animal stop in its tracks and snarl at the battered metal of the bits and pieces of armor, eyeing it warily, fur on its end, before passing by, careful even in its hate-run advance not to touch the centuries-old steel. He would have seen the Animal pause and give the rather random pair of shoes and very deliberate snuffling sniff. And he would have seen the torches arc through the air, would have seen them bash against a wall or against the stone steps, would have seen the glowing, pulsing, frozen-blue flame split and fly apart at contact with the hewn rock, seen it explode into a hundred tiny globules of frozen blue flame that bounced briefly around the stairwell before falling inert to the ground. And in those brief instances, he would have seen the sheer terror, much like his own, that reflected in the Animal's violet eyes.

But he didn't see these things. He was running for his life, and he kept running.

As he reached the seventh floor, though, passing through a stretch of corridor as he went for the next set of stairs up, his steps had begun to finally falter, his breaths had become more labored than he could ignore, and he noticed that the sounds behind him had changed; gone were the roars, the yowls, the scraping of claws on stone and the rhythmic footfalls that signified the stride of the Animal. Instead, something reached his ears that sounded like…

Wings?

He threw himself down against the ground only moments before something very large and very unfocused shot out overhead. A noise issued from the thing, something like a twisted combination of an owl's screech, a wolf's howl, a hiss of a snake, and he was aware of it turning around as he pushed himself to his feet.

Its eyes met his, and they were the same shocking violet of the Animal.

And just as it dove for him once more, intending for it to be the last, a pair of arms sprouted from the blank expanse of wall beside him, wrapping around his own arm and pulling _hard_, and his eyes watched the giant winged Animal rapidly approach, wicked-looking talons extended as he passed through very solid-looking stone as easily as through an open doorway. Then the arms released him and he was in a room, and his tired, uncoordinated feet caught beneath him and he was sent tumbling to the maroon-carpeted floor.

Behind him, someone – his savior? – snorted softly, though with what emotion, whether it was amusement or disdain, couldn't be told, and several metal somethings turned and _clanked _into their respective places, and a thunderous noise – like a giant's fist on a rickety wooden door, Harry thought, remembering his initial experience with Hagrid – boomed through the mysterious maroon-carpeted room.

Harry jumped to his feet, blood pounding through his body anew, his hand still wrapped tightly around his [useless] wand, and disregarded his attentions towards the rest of the room around him in favor of the door. For its part, the ornately-patterned door shook heavily in its frame as another _boom_ sounded, followed almost immediately by the roar that he associated with the Animal. For a second, watching the door shudder from the powerful blows befalling it, Harry thought that it was going to splinter and break like the ones in the Great Hall had; but instead, something very different happened. Something…magical.

Blue light, _actual _light, different and bright and _real, _began to form on small points all across the door, on the thick, swirling plates of metal that both decorated and secured the wood. The small, shining points expanded, twirling and conjoining in certain places, systematically-placed they seemed, linking with more of the lights until patterns emerged and small characters of unknown origin or meaning began to take shape on the expanse of the door.

When it was fully lit, shining bright from a hundred little symbols, there was another roar from the other side, and the door shook once more, softer this time, and another roar, a snarl, called out.

And then it was silent.

Harry stared at the door, his heartbeat loud in his ears, and he tried to calm himself with the sudden, oppressive silence that had fallen.

It didn't work.

When he noticed movement out of the very corner of his eye, he reacted like lightning, and his wand had snapped towards the movement before he could even really process what it was that he'd seen.

What he'd seen, as it turned out, was a girl. She was tall – taller than him, anyway, but that wasn't saying much – with blonde hair and blue eyes, and even though his wand was trained on her, her face bore no fear. At least, not that he could see.

Because she was out of focus.

A faint blur clung to her face and hands, and to her arms and her legs, exposed from beneath the school-regulation skirt. It was almost as if she were standing just behind a pane of frosted glass – he could make out her features, make out the important bits, but the rest…it was as if he was looking at her without his glasses, normally, outside of the Frozen Time. Like everything else in the world around him were glasses-on, and only she (and the Forest and its inhabitants) were glasses-off. And no matter how hard he stared or squinted, her face did not clear.

"That was surprising," she said. Harry's confusion, both from the non-sequitor and her state of being, was obvious; the girl noticed and continued with, "That the runes reacted as they did to its presence." She walked over to the door, ignoring him and the wand he had pointed her way.

He blinked and shook his head, trying to get over himself, trying to clear his eyes, but the blurriness stayed with the girl, clinging to her and her alone as she walked across the room.

She knelt and traced a thin, delicate finger across the metalwork that adorned the wood, frowning slightly. "Not that it was a bad thing that they chose to act up," she muttered to herself. "I suppose some wishes do come true…"

Harry's brain, which had taken a momentary leave of absence after all that it had experienced, sputtered, caught, and started up anew, not unlike a very old and out-of-sorts lawnmower motor. Unfortunately, his mouth was rather unwilling to cooperate with the rapid shift of state, so what tumbled from his lips was _not_ a cautious query about her identity, her state of being, and of the situation around him in general as he had been trying for, but instead came out as an unintelligible babble of nonsense. At the very least, though, the noise did attract the girl's attention to his presence.

"Very eloquent," she said, sarcasm ice on her words. She stood up, smoothing her skirt down when she straightened, and turned to face him. "I would have thought that after suffering Granger for a full year, some of her vocabulary would have impressed itself upon you." Something close to a smile flickered across her lips. "Apparently not."

In his discombobulated state, it took Harry a moment to process what she had said. His face was already red from the embarrassment of his attempted-communication, and it only became more so when he realized just how long it took him to realize that she had, in fact, insulted him.

"No snappy comeback, either? I had hoped you, of all Gryffindors, would have some amount of sense or-"

"Why are you blurred?" Harry blurted out suddenly.

If she was offended by the interruption, she didn't show it – leastways, not in a way that he could properly perceive. "No manners either," was her succinct observation.

"I asked you-"

"Put your wand away, Potter, we both know it doesn't do any good here." She turned away from him and began walking towards a lone pair of nondescript wooden chairs that sat in the corner, one bare, one with what looked like a robe draped over its back. "Come sit."

"Hey," Harry began to protest, but she cut him off with a repeat of her previous statement, more firmly. He scowled, but as he had no power in and no clue of the situation, he reluctantly followed her to the corner. She took a seat in her chair, straight, prim, and proper, and Harry in his, slouched and exhausted, but wary. He looked at her, and she looked back at him.

"Now – if you would elaborate on what you meant?" she asked neutrally. "It is not uncommon knowledge that you're blind as a bat without your glasses, Potter – _everything's _blurred."

"Not everything," Harry said before she could continue. "Not here." He could make out one of her eyebrows raising in what he assumed was skepticism. "Just certain things – the Forbidden Forest; the thing that chased me out of there and attacked me, and you."

"Putting me into the same category as something that came very close to killing you? I would be more careful with the things you so casually say, Potter; I could take offense."

"It's not just you," Harry added quickly, wondering at her choice of words. "I think…I mean, it could be me, too. I noticed when I woke up that my hands were kind of blurry; didn't think anything of it at the time, but-" He took the opportunity to look back down at his hands and he found, with mixed emotions, that he could not clearly make them out. They were out of focus; _he _was out of focus.

"They look perfectly normal to me," she observed. "Of course, I don't see myself being 'blurred' at all either, despite your claims to the contrary. Perhaps you see a different way than I do."

"Maybe," he muttered. But why on earth would he see differently in a place where time stopped? What sense did that make? Of course, _magic_ in and of itself didn't make much sense either, but… "Does it have something to do with…this?" he asked, waving a vague hand in the air, gesturing at everything. "And I don't suppose you have any ideas what _this_ is in the first place? Or why magic doesn't work? Or what in _hell _that thing that chased me was? And who are you, anyway?"

She took a long time to answer. Had Harry not been as exhausted as he was – because being chased by giant monsters would tucker anyone out – he would have been angry and impatient. But as it was, he rather thought that protesting and urging her to hurry up would only cause her to take even longer out of spite. After almost a minute of silently staring at him, the girl spoke. "This is a world where time has stopped. I do not know how far this phenomenon spreads, but it reaches at least as far as the naked eye can see. It begins at the stroke of midnight and continues for approximately one hour, at which point the world around us begins moving once more.

"This has never happened to me before, and my first experience with it was when I awoke the Midnight before last. As for the rest…" She leaned forward just slightly – in anticipation? in eagerness? – but did not break her posture. "…I would much rather you attempt to answer those yourself. I've wondered whether or not you actually have any deductive reasoning skills rattling inside your skull, Potter."

A lengthy, drawn-out breath emptied his lungs and he slouched only further in his chair. "How exactly am supposed to figure out who you are if I can't even bloody see you?"

"I would not think that my identity is the most pressing matter at hand."

"It's not," Harry replied. "Just the most annoying."

The girl was silent.

"You're in Slytherin," he began with. She didn't ask for clarification, but he suspected she wanted to be kept abreast of his thought process, so he continued. "The robes on the back of your chair have the crest emblazoned on them."

"I thought you couldn't see me."

"I _can't_ see you – not your skin, anyways. I can see your clothes just fine." There was a pause, and then the girl made a short, thoughtful hum. Harry took this as a cue to continue. "So you're Slytherin, you've got blonde hair…you're taller than me, but that's nothing to brag home about…I don't even know how old you are, or what Year you're in – how exactly do you expect me to narrow the list down enough when I only know a grand total of about ten people from your House? And most of those are from either Quidditch or Malfoy's group of toadies."

"I do not belong to either."

"That doesn't really help me."

"I am not yet able to legally visit Hogsmeade during the scheduled visits," she said, clipped and even and final; and Harry could tell that that little bit would be the only hint he would get.

"Second year, then – or first, I guess, but this early into the year? I'd think you'd still be stuck in the terrified-Firsty stage. I know I was, but that could have been because of the troll…and Fluffy…" Harry trailed off a little, muttering, before shaking his head and rerouting his lost train of thought. "My knowledge of First Years is dreadfully small, anyhow, so I suppose I'll just have to hope you're in mine, yeah?" He let out a sigh and a yawn. "Blonde hair…" He fell into mutters again. "Not Pansy…not Da-Davies? Davers? not her…" Another yawn. "…but maybe?

"Daphne?" The girl's blurred face didn't shift or even noticeably move, and her mouth neither opened nor made any sound, but somehow he suspected – he knew – "You're Daphne Greengrass, aren't you?"

Her lips pursed slightly. "Better," she said. "I was hoping you were going to give that comeback another try, but regardless – it is good to know that Malfoy is not the only Slytherin that you take note of."

"He's just the most noticeable of you lot," Harry replied, almost automatically. "Attracts the most attention. So, Daphne-"

"_-Greengrass_, Potter. You are not allowed the courtesy to address me by my first name."

"Okay," Harry agreed quickly in the face of her sharp interruption. "So, _Greengrass_, what are we doing here? And where exactly_ is_ 'here', because magic or no magic, it's not often that I have to get _pulled through a wall _to get into some secret room."

There was a brief silence before she spoke, forced patience lining her voice. "This is a room, Potter, with a hidden entrance in the seventh-floor corridor – an entrance that can only be accessed by first forcing it to appear in its proper place. The room itself, from what I have seen, can be changed upon what you desire it to be and what you wish to be available."

"Like the door, whatever that was? When it glowed?"

"I believe so."

"So you, what, _wished_ that the door would keep that – that – that giant hulking _thing _from getting in, and the room just went and made it happen?"

"That is my theory, yes."

Harry paused briefly, letting out a sigh and a mutter of "why can't magic just go and make _sense?", _before he looked up back at her and asked, "So what are we doing here, then?"

Her face moved, and he thought she may have been smiling – or, more likely for a Slytherin, smirking superiorly. "Waiting." She looked to the side, and looked out a window that he had not noticed was there before – or, if she were speaking the truth about the room and its wish-granting abilities, perhaps it had simply not been there before at all – and even blurred he thought that perhaps she seemed content as blue and un-light and shadows bathed her face. He wondered what she seemed so pleased about, and was about to speak up and ask her just that when she spoke again: "The time is almost up, so we're waiting for the end, Potter."

Harry blinked. "The end of what? This frozen-blue-time?"

"No, of the end of the _world_, because I've seen the future and there's only about six minutes left on the clock." Her face snapped away from the window to face his, and he had the clearest sense that she was glaring at him. The condescension practically oozed from her lips as she continued sharply with, "Of _course_ until the end of midnight, Potter; something which also, coincidentally, marks the same point in time until I can stop being forced to bear your presence and your inane questions."

"Cripes, Greengrass," Harry snapped back, her impatience and anger igniting his in turn, "I get that we're in rivaling Houses and that we basically hate each other on principle, but when it's just the two of us inside a centuries-old frozen-in-time castle don't you think you could be a bit less of a frigid bitch?"

"I do not abide by nor follow the guidelines set by the mere _principle_ of being a member of Slytherin, Potter, and even if I did the reasons I hold for finding you and your attitudes more akin to an annoying child than a maturing boy would not have changed in subject detail or intensity." She stood up sharply from her seat and smoothed her skirt down when it rumpled. "It would be far better for if you were able to _accept_ the occurrence of another person saving your life instead of the other way around, Potter. Remaining as self-righteous as you are now will do you no favors in futures to come." With the parting shot delivered, she picked up her robe and draped it over one arm before spinning on her heel and walking away across the room towards the door.

Harry, slouched in his seat with his hands fisted, was left with a mouthful of angry words and no one to unload them on. "You-!" was as far as he got, and was repeated several more times until he rose from his chair and spun towards the departed Daphne. She was a little over halfway across the too-large maroon-carpeted room, and he started after her, building a retort in the confines of his mind – and that's when it happened.

The world shuddered and shifted, and the floor beneath them shook slightly, and the Blue that had been everything bled away as if it had never been; and as the Blue bled away, so too did the Focus that had encompassed the world around him. Everything around him swirled together in a flood of muddled color, and he squinted as the sudden rush became too much for his weak-again eyes.

"Twelve-oh-one," Daphne said, having briefly stopped in her journey away from the Boy-Who-Lived, her voice clear and loud despite the sudden reintroduction of the world's background noises. She sounded satisfied. "I rather believe it is past your bedtime, Potter, and I think that you should return to the Hospital Wing now that the hallways are free of your blurry beasties."

Harry glared at her and discovered that, once again, the haughty Slytherin was an exception to his vision problems. Her exposed skin stood out in stark contrast to the fuzziness of her uniform, and he was able to clearly see her face when she turned back to look at him.

"Do me a favor and don't try to find me again in tomorrow's Midnight," she said. Her eyes were a crystal-colored blue, as hard and as piercing as diamonds, and her mouth was set in an expressionless line.

Harry swallowed and said, "You're the one who found me."

"And that was perhaps a mistake on my part," she replied blandly. "All the same, if I had not found you and subsequently saved your life, you would be dead, and that serious a mistake would have been unacceptable. You should count yourself lucky that there are so many who find you far more valuable alive." She turned away swiftly and began walking to the door again. "I would prefer you not speak to me until you've learned how to think before opening your mouth," she said, gripping the large metal handle of the door and pulling. There were several metallic clicks and clanks and the door swung open with little resistance.

She stepped through, turned right, and vanished down the stairwell.

Harry stood in the maroon-carpeted magically-changing room, the world a giant blur around him, and the troubles and unanswered questions of one hour weighing heavy upon him. He put a hand to his already-aching eyes and cursed.

* * *

-Nov. 10, 2:10 am-

Far, far away from the relative safety of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, on the beaches that decorated parts of Lincolnshire county, a body washed in with the low tide. For several long minutes it simply lay unmoving in the shallow water and wet sand; when it did move, it was with a sputtering cough and a quick jerk of the limbs. Long, thin arms and legs flailed, splashing silt and salt water as they tried to gain purchase on the sand.

The body only managed to move several meters forward before they collapsed back down, breathing as if they'd run a marathon and shivering from the combined temperatures of freezing water and the cool breeze that swept over the Wash. Another breath was taken, almost a strained cry, and in a twist of limbs and a scatter of sand, a large black dog lay where a man had been.

* * *

30CK / troutpeoples

Well, I can't very well say 'seven months is better than two' here, no matter how much I would like to. I had this mostly finished a while ago, but I've been busy. I rewrote large chunks of this chapter a good number of times - Harry plunging into the Forest and the latter half of his interaction with Daphne most predominately - but even then I went with the original versions of both. I dunno; I'm just unsatisfied with this one. This story was supposed to be one of my best, but...so much potential in this, but I honestly don't think I'm the writer that should be doing this thing.

I can't tell you what to expect next in the coming half-year (or whenever the next chapter wraps up), mostly because I've lost all of my hand-written plans and ideas for this when I moved from the West Coast to Florida. We'll see, though. 'til then.


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